Sicilian Culture: The News & Views: Scientists Test 5,300 Year-old Mummy Found in the Italian Alps

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Scientists Test 5,300 Year-old Mummy Found in the Italian Alps

(September 26, 2000) Scientists are hoping an ancient man who once roamed the Alps will give up some of his mysteries. On Monday samples of bone, tissue and teeth were taken from the 5,300-year-old mummy of a Bronze-Age hunter with hopes of finding out about his life. "We have no solutions, but plenty of questions," Peter Vanezis, a forensic medicine specialist, said at a news conference after the work on the Iceman was finished.
The mummy was gradually thawed over 12 hours, and then in a lab at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, Italy, the sampling took place over four hours.
Bones were scraped and chipped, and an endoscope was snaked into his intestines. The samples will be taken for study at half a dozen research institutions and universities.
A forensic expert from the University of Glasgow will try to determine how the ancient hunter died. In Zurich, scientists will analyze lead and strontium deposits on his teeth  "chemical footprints" that can reveal more about his environment.
DNA tests will also loom large in the research. Scientists in Italy and Britain will examine both the Iceman's DNA and that of the microbes in his intestinal tract. The microbes could be a clue to what sort of food he ate, Italian anthropologist Franco Rollo said. Results of some of the tests should be ready in about six months.

He said the DNA tests will also look at the mitochondria genome (mtDNA), which could reveal a common ancestry or genealogical continuity between inhabitants of the Alpine regions of 10,000 years ago and those of today.
Scientists will also try to learn if the crudely carved tattoos found on the Iceman's ankles, knees and calves, were an ancient form of acupuncture, or were added after his death for some unknown reason.
Results of some of the tests carried out on the samples taken Monday should be ready in about six months, said research coordinator Eduard Egarter Vigl. Found frozen in a glacier in the Tyrollean Alps on the Italian-Austrian border in 1991 by two German mountaineers, the Iceman quickly became the center of an international tug-of-war.
First he was claimed by Austria, but was technically found on Italian soil, so he was turned over to Italy, which has since housed him in a specially-built museum.
The superbly preserved mummy has been kept in a 21 degree viewing chamber among the array of weapons and tools found alongside him, including a copper ax, bow and flint-stone tipped arrows.
Full Credit goes to Fox News (Associated Press also contributed to this report)
www.foxnews.com/science/092600/iceman.sml

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