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“Heritage is falling into the sea,” Professor Jane Downes told The New York Times. Downes, who runs the Archaeology Institute at the University of Highlands and Islands, is talking about the Orkneys, a 70-island archipelago off the north coast of Scotland. There, climate change is gobbling up monuments to human civilization. Among the casualties are ancient chambered tombs, sites where Viking boats have been unearthed and medieval cemeteries.

A few famous places, such as the fantastic Neolithic settlement of Skara Brae, are protected by sea walls, but how long such barriers will suffice is unclear.

“Sea level in Orkney has been rising over thousands of years, and so coastal flooding and beach erosion is nothing new,” said Jim Hansom of the University of Glasgow. “What is of concern is that the extent and pace of erosion since the 1970s has increased.”

Archaeologists are struggling to keep up with environmental changes, and are working fast to process and record important sites in the Orkneys before they disappear.

Broch of Gurness, an Iron Age village in the Orkney Islands

gobble up [)gqb&l (Vp] verschlingen, schlucken , heritage [(heritidz] Erbe, Überlieferung , suffice [se(fais] genügen , cemetery [(semetri] Friedhof , chambered tomb [(tseimbed tu:m] Kammergrab , archipelago [)A:ki(pelegeu] Inselgruppe , casualty [(käzuelti] Opfer ,