In 2008, the temporary exhibition "Ice Age" was on display at the Hungarian Museum of Natural History for 8 months on almost 900 m2. The exhibition was particularly topical, as the issue of climate change and the role of humans in it is being raised and is still on the agenda. Conferences and international meetings are being held to discuss or proclaim the causes and consequences of climate change and the role of humanity in the process. The exhibition seeks to clarify the misconceptions surrounding global climate change, and the sometimes erroneous ideas about the ice age. It seeks answers to the questions that are being asked today about the role of humans in shaping our recent past and, in particular, our future.
The exhibition has not lost its relevance since its closure in 2008, and continues to be a travelling exhibition that has attracted a great deal of interest.
THE MESSAGE OF THE EXHIBITION
The extreme environmental changes (geological and biological processes) that took place during the Ice Age resulted in our current climate, the current picture of the Earth's biota and the evolution of our species, Homo sapiens. Much of our future depends on how these environmental changes, which are still taking place today, will play out on our planet in a few hundred or a thousand years. With or without us.
CONCEPT FOR THE REALISATION OF THE EXHIBITION
The multi-lingual exhibition is an interactive presentation, a kind of exploratory, investigative journey. The main target groups are families and students. The different technical units are linked by common, connecting and recurring elements (climate diagrams, ice sheets, plant covers, etc.). The visitor is transported from the present environment to the present by tracing the climatic and environmental changes of the last ice age, while learning about the trends of change, with particular reference to climate change. The scientific explanation of each phenomenon is supported by interactive elements (computer-based, multimedia and mechanical) in addition to visual elements (animal remains, reconstructions, original skeletons, etc.). The visual and installation elements of the exhibition reflect the undulation, cyclicality and contrast (cold-warm; ice-woodland).
TECHNICAL CONTENT OF THE EXHIBITION
The exhibition is being organised in the context of the much talked about and widely discussed global climate change. The exhibition aims to clarify the misconceptions and misconceptions about the ice age.
Similar climate change, cooling and warming have occurred several times in the history of the Earth. Our Earth, the 'Blue Planet', is, as far as we know, a unique wonder of the universe. It is the only known place where life, and higher life with intelligence, has evolved. Life in its various forms has survived every cataclysm and climate change in Earth's history. Living things have adapted to the changing environment.
The last ice age, the Ice Age (2.5 million years ago) - and probably all ice ages - has and will continue to test the adaptability of living nature with its rapid and very drastic climate changes, by the standards of the Earth's history. The exhibition presents the rapid environmental changes that have taken place over the last two million years, based on a series of climate changes, the phenomena of adaptive biota, and the trends in environmental and climate change in nature. Visitors are made aware that we are currently living in an ice age, in an interglacial (warming) phase. The ice age is defined as a period of millions of years during which large continuous ice sheets are observed on the Earth's surface. (Even today, the North and South Poles are covered by ice sheets.) There have been several major ice ages in Earth's history.
The diversity of our present day habitat and environment is the result of the most recent ice age, the Pleistocene or Ice Age. However, the Quaternary (the last 2.5 million years) holds a special place in Earth's history not only because of this, but also because it is the time of the appearance of humans. Man is the first living creature to actively intervene in the Earth's events, often in the belief that he is more powerful than nature itself. A new 'factor', man, has therefore played a role in shaping the natural environment and the diversity of nature.
The exhibition seeks to answer the questions we are asking today about the role and the extent to which humans have shaped our recent past and, above all, our future.
