Posted on 10/29/2011 4:22:00 AM PDT by Renfield
Shortly after 6 p.m. on a drizzling, dreary November day in 2010, two men dressed in green surgical scrubs opened the door of the Iceman's chamber in the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, Italy. They slid the frozen body onto a stainless steel gurney. One of the men was a young scientist named Marco Samadelli. Normally, it was his job to keep the famous Neolithic mummy frozen under the precise conditions that had preserved it for 5,300 years, following an attack that had left the Iceman dead, high on a nearby mountain. On this day, however, Samadelli had raised the temperature in the museum's tiny laboratory room to 18°C—64°F.
With Samadelli was a local pathologist with a trim mustache named Eduard Egarter Vigl, known informally as the Iceman's "family doctor." While Egarter Vigl poked and prodded the body with knowing, sometimes brusque familiarity, a handful of other scientists and doctors gathered around in the cramped space, preparing to do the unthinkable: defrost the Iceman. The next day, in a burst of hurried surgical interventions as urgent as any operation on a living person, they would perform the first full-scale autopsy on the thawed body, hoping to shed new light on the mystery of who the Iceman really was and how he had died such a violent death.
Egarter Vigl and Samadelli carefully transferred the body to a custom-made box lined with sterilized aluminum foil. In its frozen state, the Iceman's deep caramel skin had a dignified luster, reminiscent of a medieval figure painted in egg tempera. With the agonized reach of his rigid left arm and the crucifixate tilt of his crossed feet, the defrosting mummy struck a pose that wouldn't look out of place in a 14th-century altarpiece....
(Excerpt) Read more at ngm.nationalgeographic.com ...
He killed and ate a wild goat, and then someone killed him? Quick....was there greenpeace back then? You’ll find your murderer there.
Just astonishing what they can do with genes today. They could tell by a marker that Otsi had brown eyes. Said his closest relatives today are found on (I think) Sardinia.
They have techniques that give them as much information in 3 days as would have taken 3 years a half a decade ago. And 10 years ago they couldn’t even imagine doing these tests.
Killed a goat? May have killed and ate a neolithic muzzies wife?
I suppose that is cannibalism to them.
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| GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach | |
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Thanks Renfield. I thought we'd had recent stuff on Oetzi, not sure now, so I'm going to cast doubt to the four winds and ping this. :') |
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That has to be one of the best “mysteries” I’ve ever heard of, and I’m so glad we now have the technology to do more than guess. I’ve followed his story since he was found.
Thanks!
Near the Iceman's knee, a cross-shaped tattoo still stands out on his leathery skin. It may have been a folk remedy for arthritic joint pain.
... or .... I guess we will never know the truth.
Acupuncture points.
I guess you’d have to take that up with the socialist governments of Austria and Italy. Luckily, no American tax money was spent giving grants to researchers who were perpetuating this pursuit of knowledge of our ancient forebears.
Is it money on anthropological research you disapprove of, or all grant money?
“Society” hasn’t existed for “millions of years.” Homo sapiens itself has only been around for 200,000 years or so.
But even overlooking your vast exaggeration, your premise is still incorrect. Look at he treatment of corpses in the oldest civilization we have written records of - the Egyptian, dating from 3200 BC. There certainly WAS dismemberment of the dead human body from society’s earliest days. The earliest canopic jars date from the dynasty of Huni, 2637 - 2613 BC. Having your viscera all pulled out and stuffed into 4 jars (so that you can more easily find them in the afterlife) should certainly constitute “defacing and degrading human beings.”
Of course, there’s also the argument that slavery, as it has been practiced since time immemorial, also constitutes “defacing and degrading human beings.” It’s estimated that there are presently over 20 million people in slavery today, from servants in the Sudan to child carpet weavers in India. You may feel just as strongly against that, as well.
However, it shoots your theory that “society did without it” to pieces. If you give humans the freedom to treat other humans like dirt, without fear of retribution or sanction, they will do just that.
It's also really interesting to find out that Lyme disease was active in Europe back then. I thought it was a New World disease spread by North American ticks.
As far as hardening of the arteries... I'm not sure I'm positive that this suggests a more genetically basis. His stomach was full of highly fatty meats. Exactly the sorts of things my doctor warns me about. Unless there is some light that could be shed on this for me.
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