Forge of Creation

Lessons of the Tyrolean Iceman

Turns out we can learn a lot from Fro­zen Fritz. Also called Oetzi, the ice­man reco­ve­red from the Aus­trian alps in 1991 and has been car­bon dated to 3300 b.c.e. Turns out he lived at the time of the Cop­per age in Europe. It is enti­rely pos­si­ble that he is a repre­sen­ta­tive of the Ozieri cul­ture that later deve­lo­ped huge mega­lithic walls for defense against the very agres­sive Nura­gic cul­ture that began to take over the area in about 1600 b.c.e. His body was found 92.56 meters inside Ita­lian terri­tory (46°46’44?N 10°50’23?E? / ?46.77889, 10.83972).

The Ozieri car­ved under­ground struc­tu­res out of the solid rock called in their legends “domus de janas” or Hou­ses of the Fai­ries. These are con­si­de­red gra­ves but have long ago been loo­ted, so there is no real evi­dence left of them being used other­wise. They lived as far­mers and arti­sans, pro­du­cing fine pot­tery, metal imple­ments, obsi­dian, huge dol­men and mega­lithic circ­les such as that found in Sto­nehenge and Ave­bury. They had trade with areas all over the Medi­te­rra­nean region.

They had a sim­ple reli­gion based on gods I recog­nize from other cul­tu­res all around the world: the Hor­ned Bull and the Mother Godess.

What do we learn from him? Here is a list of the things I thought were interesting:

• High levels of Arse­nic and Cop­per were found in his hair. This along with his cop­per axe which is 99.7% cop­per sug­gests that he was pre­sent, if not ski­lled, in cop­per smel­ting operations.
• Fin­ger­nail analy­sis indi­ca­tes that he was quite sick at least 3 times in the last year before his death.
• His phy­si­cal struc­ture sug­ges­ted that he was fami­liar with long walks over hilly terrain. This is not cha­rac­te­ris­tic of the copper-age euro­pean of the time. Some have sug­ges­ted that he was a high-altitude shepherd.
• He had tat­toos over areas later deter­mi­ned to be arth­ri­tic. Acu­punc­ture, mys­ti­cal magic? Either way, this sug­gests he was part of society and had access to the latest “medi­cal” technology.
• Other items found with the Ice­man in addi­tion to the cop­per axe with a yew handle, he had a flint knife with an ash handle, a qui­ver of 14 arrows with vibur­num and dog­wood shafts. Two of the arrows, which were bro­ken, were tip­ped with flint and had fletching (sta­bi­li­zing vents), while the other 12 were unfi­nished and untip­ped. The arrows were found in a qui­ver with what is pre­su­med to be a bow string, a tool of some sort, and some ant­ler which might have been used for making arrow points. There was also an unfi­nished yew long­bow that was 1.82 metres (72 in) long.
• Also, among Ötzi’s pos­ses­sions were berries, two birch bark bas­kets, and two spe­cies of poly­pore mush­rooms with leather strings through them. One of these, the birch fun­gus, is known to have anti­bac­te­rial pro­per­ties, and was likely used for medi­ci­nal pur­po­ses. The other was a type of tin­der fun­gus, inc­lu­ded with part of what appea­red to be a com­plex fires­tar­ting kit. The kit fea­tu­red pie­ces of over a dozen dif­fe­rent plants, in addi­tion to flint and pyrite for crea­ting sparks.
• Ötzi had an arrowhead lod­ged in one shoul­der when he died, and a matching small tear on his coat.
• The arrow’s shaft had been remo­ved before death, and close exa­mi­na­tion of the body found brui­ses and cuts to the hands, wrists and chest and cere­bral trauma indi­ca­tive of a blow to the head. One of the cuts was to the base of his thumb that reached down to the bone but had no time to heal before his death. Currently it is belie­ved that death was cau­sed by a blow to the head, though researchers are unsure if this was due to a fall, or from being struck with a rock by another person.
• DNA analy­sis revea­led tra­ces of blood from four other peo­ple on his gear: one from his knife, two from the same arrowhead, and a fourth from his coat. Inter­pre­ta­tions of the fin­dings were that Ötzi killed two peo­ple with the same arrow, and was able to retrieve it on both occa­sions, and the blood on his coat was from a woun­ded com­rade he may have carried over his back. Ötzi’s unna­tu­ral pos­ture in death (fro­zen body, face down, left arm bent across the chest) sug­gests that the theory of a soli­tary death from blood loss, hun­ger, cold and weak­ness is unte­na­ble. Rather, before death occu­rred and rigor mor­tis set in, the Ice­man was tur­ned on to his sto­mach in the effort to remove the arrow shaft.
• The DNA evi­dence sug­gests that he was assis­ted by com­pa­nions who were also woun­ded; pollen and food analy­sis sug­gests that he was out of his home terri­tory. The cop­per axe could not have been made by him alone. It would have requi­red a con­cer­ted group tri­bal effort to mine, smelt and cast the cop­per axe head. This may indi­cate that Ötzi was actually part of an armed rai­ding party invol­ved in a skir­mish, perhaps with a neigh­bo­ring tribe, and this skir­mish had gone badly. It may also indi­cate that he was ambushed or attac­ked by a rival tribe’s rai­ding party on his way to deli­ver the axe.
• When the Iceman’s mitochon­drial DNA was analy­zed, it was dis­co­ve­red that he had gene­tic mar­kers asso­cia­ted with redu­ced fer­ti­lity. It has been spe­cu­la­ted that this may have affec­ted his social acceptance.
• Using a mixed sequen­cing pro­ce­dure based on PCR ampli­fi­ca­tion and 454 sequen­cing of poo­led ampli­fi­ca­tion pro­ducts, Oetzi became the first com­plete mitochondrial-genome sequence of a prehis­to­ric Euro­pean. Com­pa­red with 115 rela­ted extant linea­ges from mitochon­drial haplo­group K. It turns out that the Ice­man belon­ged to a branch of mitochon­drial haplo­group K1 that has not yet been iden­ti­fied in modern Euro­pean popu­la­tions. This is the oldest com­plete Homo sapiens mtDNA genome gene­ra­ted to date. Did his peo­ple just die out, become vic­tim of geno­cide, or dis­per­sed into the euro­pean popu­la­tion that has not yet been sampled.

OK, so maybe I didn’t list everything. The analy­sis of the food he ate was able to place him in a spe­ci­fic valley within days of his death and so on. What I find so inte­res­ting is that this is a repre­sen­ta­tive of a very odd cross sec­tion of the popu­la­tion at the time. He tra­ve­lled exten­si­vely, was a tech­ni­cal adept, avai­led him­self of the best medi­cal care, was well-dressed, pro­bably didn’t have an imme­diate family, had friends who did simi­lar acti­vi­ties and ene­mies with which he did quite a great job of figh­ting before he was killed. The Ozieri cul­ture (accor­ding to mains­tream archaeo­logy) were far­mers that didn’t tra­vel, were fairly paci­fist, and built dol­mens. Sounds like there is much more to the rea­lity of life back in 3200 b.c.e. than meets the archaeo­lo­gi­cal spade. This was a seren­di­pi­tous find, pos­sibly an out­lier, but I think it has impli­ca­tions for those who think that a homo­ge­nous world­wide civi­li­za­tion exis­ted shortly after the last Neo­lithic Ice Age.