Missouri History Museum Curator of Environmental Life David Lobbig penned this article about a few of the revealing artifacts in the current Muddy Mississippi River exhibit. He mentions “Plastic Trashin’ sculpture by Libby Reuter.
Marking TIme
Mighty Mississippi displays an epic history, but dozens of exhibit topics remain “on the cutting room floor.” Even with a 6,000 square foot gallery, the teaser for more recent story elements was edited out: Technology enabled the first people’s success in North America’s greatest watershed. This statement illuminates our present episode of an ongoing drama, as human technology threatens all the valley’s actors, and even the stage set itself.
More than 11,000 years ago, the last Ice Age finally thawed as glacial sheets retreated toward the north pole. In the beginning of the relatively warm Holocene, the geological epoch when all human existence has elapsed, the continent’s center ran rich with glacial meltwaters. Rivulets sought channels, uniting to form an ancient Mississippi River. Abundant, flowing freshwater produced tremendous variety and richness of life, and attracted people. Enormous bears, wolves, and other giant mammals roamed the landscape. Mammoths and mastodons, hairy ancestors of elephants, were among those hunted by Native Americans. Based on evidence discovered in other parts of this continent, uneaten carcasses were probably weighted down and sunk into cool backwater pools and lakes to protect and preserve future meals. Uniquely shaped stone spearpoints are the scant testimony to this period, when advanced skills refined chert cobbles into specialized weapons. Many of these sleek, delicate, and durable Clovis-like points have been found throughout the Mississippi River valley.
Today’s contrasting artifacts are the thousands of plastic products annually ejected into the watershed. The Mississippi River system is a conduit for tons of bottles and other one-time-use containers since the mid-20th century. These, and microparticles from them, will be around for thousands of years, just as Clovis points have been. Unlike a stone’s mineral composition, molecules that make up plastic do not readily break down into parts from which life is constructed: plants and animals do not use plastic to grow and survive, but instead their metabolic, reproductive, and developmental processes are often damaged by them. Just as our society is rapidly warming global climate and we are driving many species to extinction, these engineered chemicals mark the Mississippi River valley during the Anthropocene epoch, a time beginning now, as our culture’s technology abruptly changes the geological record.
