Anthropologists call for tracking and preservation of human artifacts on Mars

A new scholarship from University of Kansas anthropologist Justin Holcomb argues that the physical artifacts of human exploration of Mars deserve to be cataloged, preserved and cared for to document humanity’s first attempt at interstellar exploration.

The paper, “The Archaeological Record of Mars,” was published today in the peer-reviewed journal Natural Astronomy.

“Our main thesis is that Homo sapiens are currently undergoing a dispersal that first started in Africa, reached other continents, and has now begun to move into extraterrestrial environments,” said Holcomb, lead author of the report. “We have Start colonizing the solar system. Just as we use artifacts and features to track our movement, evolution, and history on Earth, we can do that in outer space by tracking probes, satellites, landers, and the various materials left behind. to this point.

Just as archaeologists use “junk heaps” (or ancient garbage dumps) to reveal the secrets of past societies on Earth, Holcomb believes that many materials considered “space junk” actually have huge archaeological and environmental implications. value.

“This is the first physical record of our existence, and that’s important to us,” he said. “I see a lot of scientists referring to this material as space junk, galactic junk. Our view is that it’s not junk; it’s actually very important. Shifting that narrative towards legacy is critical because the solution to junk is removal , but the solution for heritage is conservation, and there is a big difference between the two.

Future missions to Mars and other planets must consider potential archaeological damage at landing sites and other locations humans plan to explore, University of Kansas researchers believe.

Martian soil and boulders seen after NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover passed through the “Wild Dog Canyon” dunes. Photo courtesy of NASA.

“Missions to other planets must be planned with this in mind,” Holcomb said. “They’re not going to land in areas where they might interfere with those sites. They’re going to see them differently than the trash around them. That’s probably the main thing. From an academic perspective — which is what these papers aim to address — What we need to track the movement of our species through space and time, we do this through stratigraphy.

Holcomb’s co-authors are Beth L. O’Leary of New Mexico State University; Alberto Fairén of the Center for Astrobiology in Madrid, Spain, and Cornell University; Rolf Mann of KU Del; and Carl Wegman of North Carolina State University.

Holcomb’s argument for preserving the traces of human exploration on other planets builds on earlier work in which he advocated declaring a “lunar Anthropocene” — or the era in which humans dominate the lunar landscape.

“On the moon, we think we can create an Anthropocene – an era of humanity,” he said. “On Mars, we don’t think there is an Anthropocene, but there needs to be an archaeological record that becomes a stratigraphic horizon that allows us to put this material into a framework. Of course, we can do that throughout the solar system.”

Researchers at the University of Kansas trace human changes to the Martian terrain back to the crash landing of the Soviet Mars 2 probe in 1971.

A stamp issued by the Soviet Union to commemorate the 1971 Mars 2 mission, the first time humans launched an object to the surface of Mars.

“The Mars 2 crash was the first time we humans had contact with another planet — not a celestial body, because that was the moon,” Holcomb said. “But the Mars 2 crash was the first time we humans had contact with another planet. It leaves a well-preserved mark on the surface.”

While anthropologists have some understanding of how climate and geology contribute to the degradation of artifacts on Earth, the otherworldly environment of a planet like Mars certainly affects the rate and severity with which artifacts are damaged by cosmic energy, wind, water, and soil. Little is currently known about these Martian processes.

“This field is called geoarchaeology—specifically, the study of geological effects on archaeological material,” Holcomb said. “Planetary geoarchaeology is definitely a future field, and we need to consider not only materials on Mars, but materials in various places on Mars, which have different processes. For example, Mars has cryospheres in both northern and southern latitudes, Therefore, the icing action of Mars’ iron-rich sands can accelerate changes in the material – the most obvious problem is that Mars has unique global dust storms, and the Spirit Rover is in the process of erosion. Next to a dune field, once buried it becomes a dune.

Holcomb advocates developing ways to track and catalog human material on Mars and on subsequent planets humans might visit, perhaps through existing databases such as the United Nations Register of Objects Launched into Outer Space.

“If this material were heritage, we could create a database to track where it was preserved, all the way down to a damaged wheel on a rover or a helicopter blade that represents the first helicopter on another planet,” Holcomb said. “These artifacts are very much like the hand axes of East Africa or the Cape Clovis of the Americas. They represent the earliest existence and, from an archaeological perspective, are key points in the timeline of our migration history.”