Читать книгу World History For Dummies - Peter Haugen - Страница 27

In the summer of 1991, German tourists hiking in the Ötzal Alps on the border between Austria and Italy spotted a human body lodged in high-altitude ice. A few days later, a rescue team cut free the corpse of a bearded man dressed in leather. Perhaps he had been a back-to-nature hippie whose 1960s wanderings went tragically awry? No. Other curious details made that scenario unlikely — including the man’s flint-bladed knife, flint-tipped arrows, and copper-bladed ax.

Researchers at the University of Innsbruck in Austria first estimated the freeze-dried body to be 4,000 years old. Further examination moved the date of death back by 1,300 years, meaning that Ötzi (as scientists nicknamed him) was journeying over the mountains around 3300 BC when he died and was covered by falling snow.

Ötzi, who resides in Italy’s Museo Archologico dell’Alto Adige in Bolzano, is a natural mummy in that his body was preserved by nature. Scientists find out all kinds of things about the ways people lived and died from mummies, especially those that were preserved whole. Ötzi was between age 40 and 50 when he died, and he suffered from several chronic illnesses; his medicine pouch contained herbal prescriptions for what ailed him. He also had a sloe, the fruit of the blackthorn tree, presumably to eat. Probing the mummy’s stomach, researchers found that he’d eaten the meat of chamois (a European mountain goat) and deer, as well as grain (possibly in the form of bread) shortly before he died.

Ötzi’s mummified body and the things found with it prompted scholars to rethink some assumptions about the roots of European civilization. His copper ax showed that the transition from stone technology to metal happened earlier than archaeologists had previously believed. The rest of his gear — a bow, a quiver of arrows, a waterproof cape woven of grass, even his well-made shoes — show that Ötzi was well equipped for his trek across the mountains. The stress patterns in his leg bones suggest that he made such journeys routinely. At first, scientists theorized that he might have been a shepherd, but further research showed that he had been shot with an arrow and involved in a physical struggle with other men. A blow to the head and blood loss from the arrow wound probably killed him. This man could have been a soldier, perhaps part of a raiding party.