Uh-Oh! Flaw in plans... I've got a little sun out now that's beginning to melt some of that white stuff. Your boxes are looking a little soggy to me right now.
Hey! I read something really interesting about Otzi. I'm a long-time Otzi fan!
Okay. Otzi is the roughly 5,000 year old man that they found preserved in ice in 1991 near the boarder of Italy and Austria.
Otzi is super interesting because all of his clothing, tools, and shoes! were preserved right along with him when he died during the storm that buried him.
A few years back, people started asking for DNA samples so that he could be returned to his proper people...
The findings just came out. Otzi does not have DNA that matches anybody's roots today. He was either very rare to begin with, or his family line of humans have died out. They aren't sure which.
Here's a list of what Otzi had with him 5,000 years ago when he died. It's from Wikipedia. These items have always amazed me. He had snowshoes!!!
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Ötzi's clothes were sophisticated. He wore a cloak made of woven grass and a coat, a belt, a pair of leggings, a loincloth and shoes, all made of leather of different skins. He also wore a bearskin cap with a leather chin strap. The shoes were waterproof and wide, seemingly designed for walking across the snow; they were constructed using bearskin for the soles, deer hide for the top panels, and a netting made of tree bark. Soft grass went around the foot and in the shoe and functioned like modern socks. The coat, belt, leggings, and loincloth were constructed of vertical strips of leather sewn together with sinew. His belt had a pouch sewn to it that contained a cache of useful items: a scraper, drill, flint flake, bone awl, and a dried fungus to be used as tinder.
The shoes have since been reproduced by experts, and found to constitute such excellent footwear that there are plans for commercial production. However, a more recent hypothesis by British archaeologist says that Ötzi's "shoes" were actually the upper part of snowshoes. According to this theory, the item currently interpreted as part of a 'backpack' is actually the wood frame and netting of one snowshoe and animal hide to cover the torso.
Other equipment
Other items found with the Iceman were a copper axe with a yew handle, a flint knife with an ash handle, a 14 arrows with 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.
In addition, 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.
Wow - I love learning about stuff like this. That is quite a bit that he was carrying with him! What a find! I'm particularly interested in the DNA part...
I liked that DNA part... but those healing mushrooms and the shoes are just mind-boggling to me. It was Otzi who changed my whole opinion on what early man's life must have been about. This man looks to be pretty darned civilized! He even had a tool pouch on! No remote control in his hand or walkman though....
Well, with no remote control or walkman, perhaps he was MORE civilized! =)
