New revelations about the famous prehistoric mummy
He spent about 5,000 years frozen in a glacier in the mountains on the Austrian-Italian border before being found by mountaineers in 1991, sprawled out in the melting snow. Today it is in the refrigerated room of a museum in the Italian city of Bolzano. In the 11 years since its discovery, the Iceman's mummy has been studied from every possible angle.
A cloud of moisture envelops the 5,000-year-old mummy of the Iceman, preserved at the South Tyrol Archeology Museum in Bolzano, Italy.
He spent about 5,000 years frozen in a glacier in the mountains on the Austrian-Italian border before being found by mountaineers in 1991, sprawled out in the melting snow. Today it is in the refrigerated room of a museum in the Italian city of Bolzano. In the 11 years since its discovery, the Iceman's mummy has been studied from every possible angle.
Only last summer, however, experts examining his still-frozen body noticed a clue that suggests a drastic revision of his history:"Otzi" (his nickname for having been found in the Otztal Alps) did not freeze to death during a sudden snowstorm. , as some experts had assumed. In fact, he may have been murdered, a victim of war, murder, or religious sacrifice.
An X-ray examination revealed an arrowhead buried in the Iceman's left shoulder, a wound that could not have been self-inflicted. The wound, visible as a small black spot under the mummy's stiff skin, had gone unnoticed in all previous examinations. Although there are no pieces of arrow left in the wound and there is no sign of blood, it is clear that Otzi was shot in the back. But who killed him? Why?
"There's still no way to know for sure," says archaeologist Johan Reinhard, explorer-in-residence at the National Geographic Society. Reinhard is familiar with mummies. Among them, the Inca Ice Maiden, victim of a sacrifice, found by him in 1995 on the slopes of Mount Nevado Ampato, in Peru. His experience as a scholar of mountain cultures, in the Andes, the Himalayas and elsewhere, convinced him that the Iceman's death was not accidental.
"Just look at where he was killed," explains Reinhard. "It is located in a space gorge, between the two highest peaks of the Otztal Alps." "It's the kind of place where mountain people made offerings to their deities. We know that this kind of cult was important in prehistoric Europe during the Bronze Age", he continues. "And there are signs that it may have played a role in earlier times as well, in the Copper era."
Reinhard's interpretation appears to resolve several questions regarding the artifacts found alongside the mummy. Breaking up objects was a ceremonial practice in Neolithic Europe (and this perhaps explains the broken arrows near the mummy. Equally notable is the copper hatchet. Copper came from some mine and the mountains, as a source of valuable metals used in tool making , "were worshiped by miners all over the world", says Reinhard. For the archaeologist, in the case of a simple murder, such a useful object would have been taken. But, in a ritual, its participants could have left the hatchet so that Man of Ice to use it in the afterlife or else as a tribute to the gods.
Another clue:the body was found in a natural trench that crosses the gorge. According to previous hypotheses, he would have sought shelter there during a storm. "But the trench, in addition to not being deep, is in one of the highest parts of the canyon. It's a bad place to protect yourself from a storm", analyzes Reinhard. Instead, perhaps Otzi was buried by those who killed him, which would explain why his body is so well preserved.
Reinhard's ideas were not received with enthusiasm by European experts, including the person responsible for the mummy, pathologist Eduard Egarter Vigl of the Archeology Museum of South Tyrol. "Otzi was hit in the back by an arrow," he counters, suggesting he was trying to evade an attack. Others maintain that arrows are not an efficient instrument of ritual killing and that there is no conclusive evidence of other sacrifices in the Copper era.
"They took the idea of human sacrifice to be sensational," says Reinhard. "But they cannot refute my statements, and I believe that my hypothesis better explains the known facts. I know that it is controversial", he admits. "But the time has come to reassess all the evidence from another point of view. Let's look at these artifacts not just for the relationships they have with each other, but also in their social, sacred and geographic context."
Source:National Geographic Brasil Magazine, February 2002 issue.
Curiosities