GC. wikipedia's definition:
any complex society characterized by urban development, social stratification imposed by a cultural elite, symbolic systems of communication (for example, writing systems), and a perceived separation from and domination over the natural environment.

Civilizations are intimately associated with and often further defined by other socio-politico-economic characteristics, including centralization, the domestication of both humans and other organisms, specialization of labour, culturally ingrained ideologies of progress and supremacism, monumental architecture, taxation, societal dependence upon farming and expansionism.

All this from a couple of Norwegian arrowheads and bits of cloth?

Mark. Hardly civilizations! At most high altitude hunting.

Jan 25, 2018 at 9:39 AM | Supertroll

I am sure they thought it was very civilized at the time, even if the toilet facilities were not hot and cold running dysentery.

Mark Hodgson
I ignored the Climate Change aspect of the story, it is the nature of glaciers to flow down a slope and melt at some point lower in altitude leaving whatever they carried at the point of melting, be it lost tunics (must have been quite warm for the owner to remove it rather than continue wearing it) or mud and rocks picked up on the way. A the terminus of a glacier when it retreats a bit stuff is revealed when it advances stuff is buried again All seems very normal.

I wouldn't be surprised if there were Bronze and Iron Age shielings under snow and ice in Norway and Sweden. Around Scotland in areas now turned over to sheep, forestry and deer there are Lazy Beds dating back a couple of hundred years, not the warmest period in earth's history yet warm enough to support subsistence farming.

Jan 24, 2018 at 12:37 PM | DaveS
Despite, for various reasons, being a slow writer I'm not, or at least I wasn't slow of thought. So although I agree that we're all constrained by time written exams do not measure speed of thought in problem solving.

I like to bring Apollo 13 into the discussion when considering qualifications, lateral thinking and adaptive engineering. When the oxygen is running out do you need someone who has many degrees and doctorates but no practical experince or someone who can kludge up a solution with what's available in less than maximum time available.

Mark. Hardly civilizations! At most high altitude hunting.

"Prehistoric time machine: 2,000 ancient artifacts uncovered under Norway’s melting glaciers":

https://www.rt.com/news/416905-norway-ice-hunting-artifacts/

"Climate change has allowed archaeologists to find more than 2,000 ancient artifacts under perennial ice in Norway’s Oppland Mountains. However, the melting process actually poses a threat to the delicate discoveries.
Home to peaks such as the 2,439 meter Galdhoppigen, the region in central Norway also holds secrets of ancient civilisations dating back to the Iron and Bronze Ages.

A new report in the Royal Society Open Science, authored by archaeologists from Norway’s Department of Cultural Heritage and the Oxbridge universities, details how hundreds of objects have been found between 2006 and 2015."

Hmmm, if it's a "perennial" ice sheet, how did these objects get to be underneath it? If it's now warmer than it's been since [insert date of choice] how did these objects get to be under the ice? Could it be it was warmer in the Bronze & Iron Ages than it is now (or at least as warm)? Funny that...