Reports on ice caves in literature from the Twelfth to the middle of the Twentieth Century

Abstract

The main goal of this paper is to summarize the history and the progress of ice cave research in the northern hemisphere as an introduction to the following papers about modern research in the U.S. We focus on the earliest descriptions of ice caves starting from the twelfth century, a cave with ice in India, as well as the beginning of modern ice cave research in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Moreover, we give a short overview of the different theories about ice caves over the course of time. The article is an introduction to the much younger ice cave research in the U.S., which will be the topic of a second paper in this journal. ice Cave research over the Course of timeIce cave research plays only a minor role in the research of ice and snow. Less visible and much smaller than the vast ice masses above ground, the more concealed subsurface ice has been of little interest to many researchers. However, beneath the surface are numerous ice formations with a great variety of forms ranging from ice monoliths several meters thick, to ice lakes, to delicate ice crystals millimeters in size. These icy features store a vast record of climate history.Over the centuries, clergymen, amateurs, natural scientists, and locals have visited the subsurface world of ice to see this phenomenon themselves and to find an explanation for its existence. Over time, many theories about the development of ice caves have evolved, but as of today, the fundamental research has not been completed. Later in this paper, we will give a basic overview of the best-known ice cave theories.As research often focuses on cost-benefit considerations, basic research without a clearly defined impact increasingly loses prominence. This questions the benefit of ice cave research in general. But just as the exploration of the most distant regions of the universe or the abyssal depths of the sea, ice cave research has the potential to create new knowledge. For example, one can learn about the regional and local climate history outside the mountainous regions that are covered by glaciers on the surface.In a series of three papers in this journal, the historical, as well as the current research on ice caves, will be presented to review lost or forgotten knowledge and to attempt to revive and support ice cave research, which is stagnant in some countries. After an overview of the first records of underground ice in Europe and Asia, the second article covers the records and research in the United States. The third article is about our own research in gulch, talus, and slope ice in New England.It is well known from the analysis of ice cores and pollen that the ice in some caves is several thousand years old, has outlasted several climatic temperature maxima, and is not a remnant of the Little Ice Age as was supposed in former times (Silvestru, 1999). Historic documents, for example, describe the complete extinction of ice from the Chauxlès-Passavant (France), which was followed by a new ice accumulation (Fugger, 1893).When were ice caves first ...