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Water – A witness of the times

If we want to know how our world appeared 2,000 years ago, all we have to do is ask the water. At a depth of more than 70 metres, we can find deep-frozen water that scientists can use to explore the state of the environment thousands of years ago. Russian scientists have extracted an ice core by drilling at the Vostok station in Central Antarctica near the magnetic South Pole, at the position 78° 27' South, 106° 52' East, from which they can obtain detailed information about the properties of air and vegetation from the time of the birth of Christ. The ice of Antarctica contains valuable information on the history of the earth's climate and vegetation. Within the ice are trapped air bubbles, dust from the continental air, biological material, volcanic residues, cosmic particles, isotopes and other substances which were mixed with snow and deposited during every snowfall. The scientists can count the annual deposits – similar to the rings of a tree.

Valery Leschtschikow, President of the Russian Environmental Fund, presents the amphora containing the 2000-year-old water to Johann Grander, one of only less than 10 people selected worldwide to receive this unique gift.

The whole ice layer at this point is 3,780 metres deep. The annual snowfall here immediately freezes to form layers of ice. The temperatures at the Russian station never rise above minus 30°C, even in the summer. The lowest temperature ever measured in the world was registered here at Vostok – minus 89.2°C.

The subterranean lake

Russian scientists also made another sensational find. In 1994 they discovered a subterranean lake under their drilling site. During their seismological scanning they located a lake with a length of 225 kilometres, a width of 48 kilometres and a depth of 914 metres. The estimated age of the water in the subterranean lake was put at 35 million years, and the lake has been isolated from the rest of the world for at least the last 500,000 years. It could possibly contain bacteria and micro-organisms with unique genetics – from a time when Antarctica was still covered with a green rainforest. The Russian scientists stopped their drilling 120 metres short, to avoid penetrating the lake and endangering this unique record of the earth's history.

A valuable gift

The melted ice from these depths is not only of interest to scientists, but it also provides a unique gift, albeit one which needs special care.

Very few were selected from around the world to receive a water sample from the time of Christ's birth. They were the three presidents of the large Slav states of Russia, the Ukraine and Belarus; the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Alexy II; the head of the Roman Catholic Church, John Paul II; and a man with whom the Russian water scientists share a strong bond – Johann Grander. The specially designed amphora, or two handled flask, was presented by the President of the Russian Environmental Fund, Valery Leschtschikow, to Johann Grander at a private ceremony in Jochberg on April 4, 2003.