INTRO
Imagine you are walking on Monte Rosa, where every footfall echoes with tales of millennia.
At 4,291 meters, on the east face of the Lyskamm glacier, the ice has guarded a secret for 6,600 years: a tiny marmot, curled upon a rock, as if time caught it mid-dream.
The Monte Rosa marmot mummy, uncovered in August 2022 by alpine guide Corrado Gaspard and Egle Fosson, is more than a relic, it’s a window into a distant era, a story etched in frost that beckons us to ponder our bond with the Alps.
The Story Behind the Discovery
That day, descending in Gressoney-La-Trinité, Corrado and Egle paused, spellbound.
The marmot, its fur pristine and body tucked in a fetal pose, seemed alive, poised to awaken.
Gently carried to the Efisio Noussan Regional Museum of Natural Sciences in Saint-Pierre, radiocarbon dating revealed its age: 4,691–4,501 BCE, the Neolithic. Italy’s oldest known animal mummy, it transports us to a Monte Rosa unlike today’s, where warmer climates perhaps nurtured alpine meadows at altitudes now cloaked in glaciers.
Why was a marmot so high up? Scientists in the Marmot Mummy Project, including Eurac Research and the University of Turin, are seeking answers. Its skeleton, soil microbes, and DNA are clues to a lost world.
Perhaps 6,600 years ago, the Lyskamm was a verdant haven, with grasses sustaining creatures like this one. Its presence, at an altitude unusual for modern marmots (living below 2,800 meters), hints at a milder climate, a Monte Rosa that breathed differently.
Yet its discovery, spurred by melting ice, carries a shadow: climate change, unveiling the past, endangers our glaciers’ future.
The Marmot Mummy Today
Today, the marmot mummy rests in a high-tech, oxygen-free case at Saint-Pierre Castle’s Natural Sciences Museum.
Biologist Velca Botti calls its tenderness elusive to photographs: you must stand near, picturing its final day under a Neolithic sky, to feel its spirit.
Its fur, glinting in the light, and its curled form tell a story of survival, adaptation, and a time when the Alps were warmer and more welcoming.
This find is more than science: it’s a dialogue with the mountain.
Monte Rosa, with its retreating glaciers, returns fragments of memory, as if yearning to speak. The marmot is a messenger, urging us to tread lightly on these peaks, to notice details, a crack in the ice, a wind-smoothed stone, that hold stories.
It’s a reminder: the Alps are not just landscapes but keepers of a past that still lives.
Are you ready to listen?
Monte Rosa is more than a destination.
It’s a journey that touches the heart, a place where time weaves with eternity.
Join us to explore its glaciers, to feel the pulse of a story that still breathes.
Every step is a tale, and the next could be yours.
Experience Monte Rosa with us: Monte Rosa Adventures
