Hidden History: Lost Civilizations, Secret Knowledge, and Ancient Mysteries by Brian Haughton (beginner reading books for adults txt) 📕

The body was transported to the University of Innsbruck, where a careful examination revealed that it was definitely not a modern mountaineer. Radiocarbon dating showed that the remains were of a man who had died around 3200 B.C. (in the Late Neolithic period) and was thus the oldest preserved human body ever discovered. Further examinations of Otzi, as he has become known (because he was found in the Otztal Alps), followed, and it was determined that he was 5-feet 2-inches tall and between 40 and 50 years of age when he died, although the cause of death remained a mystery. Analysis of his stomach contents revealed the remains of two meals, the last eaten about eight hours before he died and consisting of a piece of unleavened bread made of einkorn wheat, some roots, and red deer meat. Analysis of extremely well-preserved pollen from the intestines revealed that Otzi died in late spring or early summer.

Otzi had a total of 57 tattoos on his body, comprising small parallel stripes and crosses, which were made with a charcoal-based pigment. As the tattoos were concentrated around the spine, lumbar region, knees, and ankles, it is believed that they may not have been decorative. Examination of the Ice Man's skeleton revealed that he had been suffering from arthritis, and the positioning of the tattoos at known acupuncture points has persuaded many researchers that Otzi's tattoos served a therapeutic purpose.

The remains of the the Ice Man's clothing were fairly well-preserved by the ice. When he died, Otzi was wearing shoes made from a combination of bearskin soles and a top of deer hide and tree bark, with soft grass stuffed inside for warmth. He also wore a woven grass cloak, which he probably also used as a blanket, and a leather vest and fur cap. Alongside the body, various articles, which the Ice Man had been carrying with him on his last journey, were also discovered. These items consisted of a copper axe with a yew handle, an unfinished yew longbow, a deerskin quiver with two flint-tipped arrows and 12 unfinished shafts, a flint knife and scabbord, a calfskin belt

pouch, a medicine bag containing medicinal fungus, a flint and pyrite for creating sparks, a goat-fur rucksack, and a tassel with a stone bead. All of this was invaluable material for painting a picture of the life and death of the Ice Man.

But who was this mysterious traveller, and what had prompted him to venture 1.8 miles up into the desolate Otzal Alps? DNA analysis has shown that Otzi was most closely related to Europeans living around the Alps. Further isotopic analysis of his teeth and bones by geochemist Wolfgang Muller, of the Australian National University, together with colleagues in the United States and Switzerland, have narrowed Otzi's birthplace down to a site near to the Italian Tyrol village of Feldthurns, north of present-day Bolzano, about 30 miles southeast of the place where he met his death. High levels of copper and arsenic found in Otzi's hair show that he had taken part in copper smelting, probably making his own weapons and tools.

The first widely held theory as to why the Ice Man was travelling alone up in the Otztal Alps (and how he met his death) was that he was a shepherd who had been taking care of his flock in an upland pasture. The hypothesis was that he had been caught in an unseasonable storm and found shelter in the shallow gully where he was found. A variant on this theory, proposed by Dr. Konrad Spindler, leader of the scientific investigation into the Ice Man, was based on early x-rays of the body taken at Innsbruck. These x-rays appear to show broken ribs on the body's right side, which Spindler believed were the result of some kind of fight which Otzi had become involved in while returning to his home village with his sheep. Although Otzi had escaped the battle with his life, he eventually died of the injuries in the place where the hikers found him more than 5,000 years later. But new examinations of the body in 2001 by scientists at a laboratory in Bolanzo showed that the ribs had been bent out of shape after death, due to snow and ice pressing against the ribcage. Another theory connected the Ice Man with the various bog bodies, such as Tollund Man and Lindow Man, recovered from the peat bogs of northern Europe. Many of the first millennium B.c. examples of these bodies show that the victims had eaten a last meal similar to that of the Ice Man just before their death, and appear to have been ritually sacrificed before being thrown into the bog. Could the Ice Man have been a ritual sacrifice? Dramatic findings from the examinations at Bolanzo suggested otherwise.

A CAT scan of the body showed a foreign object located near the shoulder, in the shape of an arrow. Further examinations revealed that Otzi had a flint arrowhead lodged in his shoulder. The Ice Man had been murdered. A small tear discovered in Otzi's coat appears to be where the arrow entered the body. In June 2002, the same team of scientists discovered a deep wound on the Ice Man's hand, and further bruises and cuts on his wrists and chest, seemingly defensive wounds, all inflicted only hours before his death. Fascinatingly, DNA analysis shows traces of blood from four separate people on Otzi's clothes and weapons: one sequence from his knife blade,

two different sequences from the same arrowhead, and a fourth from his goatskin coat. In light of these recent discoveries, various new theories have been put forward to explain what exactly happened to the Ice Man.

The presence of only the flint tip of the arrowhead in the body indicates that either Otzi or a companion must have pulled the wooden shaft of the arrow out.