I think most people have heard of the Ice Man, a Stone-Age man whose body was found in the Alps in 1991, a man who had been dead for approximately 5,300 years. Since then, his body has been studied and we’ve learned quite a bit about him, such as the tools he carried with him, his clothing and other such things. (Here’s a link to the museum. You can read it in either English, German or Italian.)
But the most recent news is the most startling. It was believed that the Ice Man died after a bad fall because of his internal injuries (broken ribs and internal bleeding). But now it is known that the poor guy had been shot in the shoulder by an arrow with a flint arrowhead and that it’s likely it took him hours to die.
Who’s to know if it was a murder? Maybe some people were only defending themselves from an attack by him and a few of his pals. Who knows? But this is a pretty interesting development in a discovery that was already pretty cool.
Have any of you read this book?It was written by one of the PI’s (principal investigator) of the recovery of the body and its associated artifacts. The whole thing was a comedy of errors. Things were dropped in water and a birch bark carrying case was stepped on. Given the “issues” surrounding the recovery, and the fact that everyone wanted to examine the remains, it doesn’t surprise me that some things were missed.
Please remember I said it MAY have been a murder; there’s no real evidence one way or another. It could have been a hunting accident. He could have been part of a group competing with another group for food or water and there was a fight and he was one of the casualties. But whatever happened, you have to wonder why his killer or killers did not get his stuff. He was found fully clothed and with a number of tools (including an axe with a blade made of nearly-pure copper and the means to make fire) and his own weapons (flint-blade dagger, unfinished bow and a couple of arrows. Puzzling. Maybe his body fell into an inaccessible place and his killer(s) just left him there.
Also note that I was in error when I said Otzi was a Stone Age man; he lived in the Bronze Age.
Hey, maybe he’s really Cain!
adam, that book is available in the library. I may check it out.
My archaeology Professor at the time showed us footage of the recovery of the body and then gave us a half hour rant about what a compleat balls up the recovery of a unique find was done.
In all fairness however the people who removed the body had no idea what they had found, imagining that the body was, at the oldest medieval or a missing climber from a more recent era.
Kipper
That there is the reason for care and caution whenever carrying out recovery of artifacts, you never know exactly how important a find is until you have analysed it.
One something has been removed from its context it is often impossible to go back to that level for further examination, it has to be doen right first time.
I know of sites which have been left alone since present technology and knowledge means that they probably cannot yield useful data.
These are kept on file and when new techniques are available those sites may be revisited.
IIRC there was a custody dispute between Italy and Germany about whose territory he was on, and then from which direction he had come leading to attempts to define his nationality.
All completely ludicrous since neither country were in existance at the time by several tens of thousands of years.
I think there was also a problem in that the ice was melting too, which was used as a pointer of global warming, and this required hasty removal, in fact it was the melting ice that brought him to the surface again.
