sabato 31 gennaio 2015

Uso del Propulsore.

Conoscerlo è un conto (il propulsore era noto dal 18.000 a.C.) usarlo è un altro (mi sono sempre chiesto se i Protosardi ne avessero bisogno: non credo). 
Dimostrare che fosse usato  da una popolazione richiede ricerca. Per i Paleo indiani nord americani, eccola:


First Americans used spear-throwers to hunt large animals 



Despite a lack of archaeological evidence, the first North Americans have often been depicted hunting with spear-throwers, which are tools that can launch deadly spear points at high speeds. 
But now, a new analysis of microscopic fractures on Paleo-Indian spear points provides the first empirical evidence that America's first hunters really did use these weapons to tackle mammoths and other big game.





A nearly complete Clovis projectile point of dendritic chert, a mid-interval biface  of translucent quartz, displaying relatively heavy red ochre residue and an  "end-beveled" osseous rod, also exhibiting red ochre residue  [Credit: Sarah L. Anzick] 

The new study has implications for scientists' understanding of the way Paleo-Indians lived, researchers say. 
To understand the inner workings of extinct hunter-gatherer societies, it's important to first learn how the ancient peoples got the food they ate, because their lives were closely tied to their subsistence activities. 
Current models of Paleo-Indian society are based on the assumption that hunters sometimes used spear-throwers, or atlatls, said study author Karl Hutchings, an archaeologist at Thompson Rivers University in Canada. "We can now be assured that those assumptions were right," Hutchings told Live Science. Ancient hunting tools Similar to bows, atlatls can propel flexible, pointed shafts — called darts, rather than arrows — at high speeds across long distances. 
Essentially, they were sticklike tools that contained a hook or spur at one end to hold a dart. By swinging the spear-thrower overhead and forward, hunters could launch their darts with greater force than if they were to throw them like javelins. 
Archaeological evidence indicates that hunter-gathers in the Old World used atlatls beginning at least 18,000 years ago
Researchers have long thought that Paleo-Indians — including the people of the Clovis culture, who lived around 13,000 years ago and are considered one of the first American peoples — also hunted with spear-throwers. 
Researchers reasoned that "if the spear-thrower originated in the Old World, then it only made sense that it must have shown up with early [North American] colonists," Hutchings said. Additionally, Paleo-Indians were thought to have hunted big animals, such as mammoths and ground sloths, which would have required powerful, long-distance weapons to take the animals down safely. "People started wondering just how crazy you would have to be to run up to these things with just a sharp, broken rock tied to a stick." 



Karl Hutchings, an archaeologist at Thompson Rivers University in Canada,  holds a Clovis spear point [Credit: Karl Hutchings] 


But archaeological evidence of Paleo-Indian atlatls and darts is lacking because these tools were often made of wood, which doesn't preserve well — the only part of the weapons left in the archaeological record are the stone points, which could have also been used in other types of weapons, such as spears, Hutchings said. In comparison, ancient spear-throwers from Europe were often made of ivory or bone. 
The earliest known evidence of Paleo-Indian spear-throwers comes from 11,000-year-old "bannerstones," which are stone objects that may have functioned as atlatl weights, though the true function of bannerstones is debated, Hutchings said.
 The earliest solid evidence of atlatls in the New World, then, are 9,000- to 10,000-year-old spear-thrower hooks from Warm Mineral Springs, a sinkhole in Florida. However, these tools date back to the Early Archaic subperiod, which came after the Paleo-Indian period. 
Telltale fractures To see if the earliest North Americans — including people from the Clovis culture, Folsom culture (10,000 to 11,000 years ago) and other Paleo-Indians — used atlatls, Hutchings analyzed the fractures present in hundreds of spear points. He looked for clues that the weapon tips experienced high-velocity, mechanically propelled impacts. 
If a spear point hits a target hard enough, the energy of the impact will cause the tip to break. "When it breaks, it sends a shock wave through the stone that produces fractures, which are related to the amount and kind of force involved," Hutchings said. 
By measuring topographic features on the fracture surface, you can calculate the "fracture velocity" of the impact, or how quickly the fractures spread through the material, Hutchings explained. Because different weapons — spears, javelins, atlatls or bows — produce specific fracture velocities and related forces, you can work backward from a fracture to determine what caused it. Using this method, which he developed in the late 1990s, Hutchings determined the fracture velocities for 55 out of 668 Paleo-Indian artifacts that he examined. 
Of these points, about half of them exhibited fracture velocities that can only be achieved using an atlatl and dart or a bow and arrow.
 Because Paleo-Indians aren't thought to have had bows and arrows or other propulsive weapons, the findings suggest that they most likely used atlatls to launch their spear points, Hutchings said. Importantly, the method may also help scientists better understand ancient projectile technologies, by allowing them to trace the origin of the technologies and how they were used across societies and continents. 
"We can get a better resolution of when these technologies occurred, how they spread and why they spread," Hutchings said. Hutchings detailed his findings in the March issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science. 

Author: Joseph Castro | Source: LiveScience [January 28, 2015]

Read more at: http://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.it/2015/01/first-americans-used-spear-throwers-to.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+TheArchaeologyNewsNetwork+(The+Archaeology+News+Network)
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venerdì 30 gennaio 2015

La Scienza del creazionismo: l'ARCA- eologia


An example of ‘creation science’ in action: 


the case of Noah’s missing Ark


One of the Biblical stories that forms a central part of creationist beliefs is the supposed universal flood of Genesis. According to the account, the flood took place when Noah was 600 years old; the data provided by the genealogies in Genesis allow us to calculate that this would have been about 1,600 years after creation. If we assume the earth to have been created in 4004 BCE, the flood would have happened about 2348 BCE, around the time the pyramids were being built at Giza.

What’s the evidence?


Unsurprisingly, the Egyptian historical records of the period, which are reasonably full and complex, do not document a flood or the complete annihilation of population from the Nile valley. 
Nor is there any indication that in the years following the otherwise undocumented flood, the region was recolonised by a new population, the descendants of a Mesopotamian boat-builder and the animals he had rescued from the antediluvian world. 
Further afield, Chinese records make no mention of this universal flood. 
The archaeological record of the Indus Valley civilisation fails to show a mid-third-millennium hiatus. 
In Britain, the third millennium saw the development of Stonehenge from a simple banked enclosure to a complex arrangement of stones with no evidence that it languished for the best part of a year, half finished, under thousands of metres of floodwater. 
Nowhere in the world do we find archaeological evidence for any form of disruption to populations, cultures or settlement patterns at the required date. 
The sole piece of evidence used by creationists is the so-called ‘flood deposit’ found by Sir Leonard Woolley (1880-1960) at Ur in 1929. This is more probably explained as a result of silting in marshes towards the moths of the Rivers Euphrates and Tigris at a time of a marine transgression, when the Persian Gulf extended further north than it now does than evidence for even a regional flood. 
There is simply no evidence from any part of the world to support the Biblical account of a worldwide flood in the third millennium BCE (or at any other time, for that matter!) that wiped out all humanity, land animals and birds, with the exception of eight people from Mesopotamia and the animals that accompanied them on the Ark and the recolonisation of the earth by their descendants.
One response to the problem has been to re-date ancient sites, especially those of Egypt. Pointing out that pioneer Egyptologists in the early nineteenth century developed chronologies pushing back the start of pharaonic civilisation to before 5000 BCE and that the tendency since has been to reduce these chronologies to start around 3000 BCE, some suggest that it should be downdated still further. Dates as late as c 2250 BCE have been proposed by suggesting that the Old Kingdom (conventionally 3100-2150 BCE) and Middle Kingdom (2100-1750 BCE) were contemporary. 
This can only be done by manipulating lists of kings and other textual evidence; it is shown up as impossible by stratigraphy, where Old Kingdom remains always precede those of the Middle Kingdom on sites where both occur. In other places, it becomes necessary to discard radiocarbon and other scientifically derived dates, as we saw above.
In Search of Noah’s Ark

Claims that we've found the Ark


According to a story first published in 1940 in New Eden, a Los Angeles (USA) magazine, a ship-like shape had been discovered on the slopes of Mount Ararat by a Russian pilot, Lieutenant Vladimir Roskovitsky during the late summer of 1916, but although the story has long been known to be a hoax, it is still repeated by creationists, especially those dubbed "Arkeologists" by their critics. Attempts to salvage the story by suggesting that Roskovitsky was a pseudonym and that there were in fact two pilots (First Lieutenants Zabolotsky and Lesin of the Third Caucasian Air Division) take no account of the thirty-six year delay between alleged discovery and report. International tensions in the region following the Russian Revolution in 1917 prevented international exploration until 1948, although rumours that a detachment of Russian soldiers spotted it in the summer of 1917 and Soviet Major J Maskelyn sent an pilot and, subsequently, investigators to the location of ‘Roskovitsky’s’ discovery during the Second World War continue to circulate. 
An American team is said to have visited Ararat in 1948 but to have found nothing. 
Four years later, a French team led by Fernand Navarra (born 1915), a wealthy demolition engineer from Bordeaux, discovered the shape of a ship’s hull visible beneath the ice of a glacier, which proved to be nothing more than an unusual rock formation. He returned three more times (in 1953, 1955 and 1969). 
Wood samples he brought back have been radiocarbon dated to between around 1300 years old and 1700 years old: much too young to have come from Noah’s ark, which ought to be almost five thousand years old. Nevertheless, some authors continue to maintain that the radiocarbon date was determined as c 5000 bc.
The formation at Doğubayazit in eastern Turkey; this is not Noah’s Ark!
The formation near
Doğubayzit (Turkey)
In 1960, Life magazine ran a story about an expedition to investigate the outline of what appeared to be a ship on the slopes of Mount Kalinbabada near Doğubayazit in eastern Turkey, rather than on Ararat itself. One scientist in the group offered the opinion that the phenomenon was too symmetrical to be a natural formation, but an intensive search of the site failed to produce any evidence for artificiality. Nevertheless, one of the photographs of the formation was captioned by the magazine as if to suggest that the phenomenon might be the remains of Noah’s Ark. The site remained a potential identification for believers in the literal truth of Genesis. Other searches placed Noah’s grounded Ark on its traditional location on Mount Ararat, further north. A 1975 Sun-TV special and its tie-in book, In Search of Noah’s Ark, by the “motivational speaker” and religious activist David (Dave) W Balsiger and Mormon television/film director Charles E (Chuck) Sellier proved to reawaken interest in the subject.

Here we go again…

Ron Wyatt
Ron Wyatt (1933-1999)
In the mid 1980s, another explorer, named Ron Wyatt (1933-1999), returned to re-identify the Doğubayazit formation with Noah’s Ark. He claimed that it contained large quantities of ‘gopher wood’, from which Genesis says the Ark was built. The Turkish Ministry of Cultural Affairs and the High Commission on Ancient Monuments declared the area a national park, allegedly to protect it from the unwanted attentions of looters. A number of supposed artefacts were recovered from the site and the surrounding area, including what was said to be an iron bracket. Microscopic studies showed that the ‘bracket’ was entirely natural and had formed from weathered volcanic minerals. The supposedly fossilized ‘gopher wood’ bark turned out to be metamorphosed peridotite. Ground penetrating radar surveys that were initially claimed to reveal metal-braced walls proved to show naturally occurring concentrations of limonite and magnetite in steeply inclined sedimentary layers. Fossiliferous limestone cutting across the syncline that forms the feature shows that the structure cannot have been Noah’s Ark according to the creationist rules because these supposed flood deposits are younger than the Ark, whereas it ought to have come to rest on top of them. Pierced cylindrical stones found at Kazan, traditionally identified as the anchor stones of the Ark, are local andesite and not minerals from Mesopotamia, where the Biblical story indicates that they should have originated.
The Doğubayazit ‘Ark’ is beyond doubt an entirely natural formation and it is misleading of creationists to claim that there is evidence to show that it is a ‘fossilised’ ship. Ingenious explanations that it is the ‘imprint’ of the ship in the natural rock and that the ark itself has slid further down the mountainside to the location of ‘Roskovitsky’s’ discovery ignore several inconvenient facts: the Doğubayazit formation lies at an altitude of around 2000 m, 50 km south or Ararat, while ‘Roskovitsky’s’ discovery lay at an altitude of around 3500 m on the northern slope of the mountain; the Doğubayazit formation has a pointed ‘prow’, while ‘Roskovitsky’ saw a barge-like object with squared-off ends. However, these logical inconsistencies do not deter Arkeologists, even though many now dismiss the work of Ron Wyatt (who, incidentally, claimed to have identified such important archaeological discoveries as the wheels of chariots from pharaoh’s army on the bed of the Red Sea, the pillar of salt that was once Lot’s wife or Noah’s house). Nevertheless, creationists continue to search for the remains of Noah’s Ark, despite the overwhelming consensus of biblical scholars that the story in Genesis is not the original version of the story.

Update: the 2009 expedition to Ararat

In January 2009, it was announced that Dr Randall Price, a lecturer in Judaic Studies at the fundamentalist Libery University, Virginia (USA) would be taking an expedition to Turkey to search Mount Ararat for the remains of Noah’s Ark. In twenty-five years of searching, he has visited Turkey more than thirty times and, in 2008, he met a Kurdish shepherd who claimed to have seen the Ark as a boy. In September 2008, the shepherd led Price to the location but found that it was covered by boulders, which they estimated to be some sixty feet (18.3 m) deep. He estimated that he would need about $60,000 to pay for an expedition to remove the boulders and locate fragments of the Ark.
So, in the spring of 2009, he set out again. In a news release, he updated his progress by 28 December 2009. Despite the upbeat tone of the piece (“we’d like to think it’s Noah’s Ark, we’re not sure what it is, but it’s in the right place”; whatever there is to be discovered, it should be found when he returns in the coming summer), it is obvious that he has nothing to show for his efforts (apart, one suspects, for a bank balance now depleted by $60,000 raised from where? The faithful?). Richard Bartholomew’s blog has a niecly dismissive piece on this latest attempt to fleece the faithful raise money for a worthy quest.

The origins of the flood story


The mythical king Gilgamesh
The mythical
King Gilgamesh
The stories surrounding the Sumerian hero Gilgamesh include a Flood legend so like the one in Genesis (with a Noah character, Ziusudra, known to Ancient Greek writers as Xisuthros), that they are obviously a source for much of the Noah story. Even the most conservative estimates for the date of the Pentateuch place it at least a thousand years later than the surviving versions of the Sumerian story. In the Assyrian Epic of Gilgamesh proper, the survivor of the flood is called Utnapishtim, who landed on the Mountain of Nisir. There is also an Old Babylonian poem that mentions a universal flood, this time with a hero called Atraḫasīs or Ḫasīsatra. Most Biblical scholars (with the exception of Christian fundamentalists) agree that the ancient Hebrews adopted a flood story into their mythology at some point during a period of close contact with Mesopotamia, perhaps during the Exile or perhaps much earlier, in view of the differences between it and the Babylonian version.
One of the investigators in the 1980s, David Fasold (1939-1998), quickly recognised that the feature near Doğubayazit is not Noah’s Ark, but an entirely natural, geological formation. However, as an interesting corollary, he suggested that it may well have been the very shape of the site that encouraged ancient populations to think of it as a ship and to invent the story of a Deluge to account for its presence 2,000 metres up a mountainside. Whilst this is an ingenious explanation, we do not know that Mount Kalinbabada, the location of the Doğubayazit formation, is the biblical Ararat or Assyrian Nisir, nor do we know that the shape of the formation that looks so boat-like today appeared equally boat-like four thousand years ago.

Conclusion

It should come as no surprise that other past societies have flood myths. Leaving aside obvious allegorical connotations to purifying rebirth, they are a key element in the mythologies of civilisations who owe their existence to flood-prone river systems such as the Nile, Tigris or Euphrates.
Creationism is ultimately a dogmatic and inflexible religious system that demands an unquestioning belief in its authority from its followers. It does not represent the mainstream views of those within the religions in which it has taken hold. Despite the claims of so-called Scientific Creationism or Intelligent Design, their system is not open to testing in anything like the ways that would be acceptable to mainstream scientists. Members of some creationist institutions are required to sign statements that they will uphold and not question the central beliefs of creationism. Many prominent creationists apparently believe that whatever advances the cause is true, whereas whatever damages it is false (an attitude with a venerable Christian history: the third-century bishop Clement of Alexandria taught that it is right to lie if it helps spread the faith, even to the extent of denying something palpably true). Errors should be covered up as soon as possible and only admitted when failure to do so threatens greater damage to the cause. If colleagues spread errors, it is better not to criticise them in public, as it is better to deceive believers than to have them question the legitimacy of their leaders. This exposes the huge gulf between ‘creation science’ and real science. Scientists become famous by overturning the errors of previous generations; in ‘scientific creationism’, a system based on authority and faith, someone who exposes an error is a treacherous apostate.

This page was 
Written by Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews and James Doeser

Why Kingfisher Wears A War Bonnet



Dopo i Buddha Afgani, Ninive

ISIS destroys large parts of Nineveh historical wall





  A Kurdish official revealed on Tuesday evening that the ISIS organization had bombed large parts and tracts of the ancient Nineveh wall, indicating that such an act violates the right of human culture and heritage. 

The media official of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) in Mosul, Saed Mimousine said in an interview for IraqiNews.com, “ISIS militants blew up today large parts and expanses of the archaeological wall of Nineveh in al-Tahrir neighborhood,” explaining that, “The terrorist group used explosives in the process of destroying the archaeological fence.” 

Mimousine added, “The Wall of Nineveh is one of the most distinctive archaeological monuments in Iraq and the Middle East” adding that, “The fence dates back to the Assyrian civilization.” Mimousine stressed that, “Bombing the archaeological monuments by ISIS is a flagrant violation of the right of human culture, civilization and heritage,” calling the international community to “take a stand to curb the destruction of historic monuments.” 

Source: Iraqi News 

[January 28, 2015]

giovedì 29 gennaio 2015

OTZI, ancora.

Nuovi tatuaggi antichi.


Sono stati rinvenuti 'nuovi' tatuaggi su Otzi (l'Uomo 'di 

ghiaccio' di Similaun che fu rinvenuto nel ghiacciaio della 

Val Venosta).   La notizia è interessante, anche se - 

apparentemente - sembrerebbe impresa davvero dappoco il 

rinvenimento di un tatuaggio. La realtà dei fatti è diversa: la 

cute di Otzi (ben lontana dall'essere cute 'normale', ormai) si 

è molto scurita nel tempo e questo rende necessario l'uso di 

una tecnica fotografica non invasiva particolare, che 

permette di identificare tatuaggi anche solo presenti nello 

strato profondo dell'epidermide... E ciò è proprio quello che 

hanno fatto i ricercatori del EURAC, scoprendo una nuova 

serie di piccole linee nella zona costale anteriore inferiore 

destra di Otzi...



Illustrazione dei nuovi tatuaggi di Otzi (da Samadelli 2009:52).  La colorazione scura dei segni - si ritiene - fu ottenuta con ripetute epplicazioni nel tempo, in ciascuna sede, del pigmento (probabilmente, polvere di carbone di legno) 
[Credit: © Lars Krutak]

Già gli scopritori del corpo di Otzi avevano notato, fin dal 

giorno della scoperta, il 19 settembre 1991, la presenza dei 

suoi tatuaggi. Da allora, sono stati effettuati numerosi studi 

su entità, modalità e classificazione dei segni tatuati.

Ma ora, utilizzando una nuova metodica che egli stesso ha 

messo a punto, Marco Samadelli (scienziato dell'EURAC - 

Istituto per Le Mummie e per l'Uomo di Ghiaccio) ha potuto 

effettuare una completa mappatura di tutti i tatuaggi di Otzi, 

che sono - si deve ricordare - tra i più antichi tatuaggi mai 

rinvenuti nel mondo...





Visione d'insieme dei tatuaggi.
 [Credit: © Marco Samadelli

Samadelli ha fotografato il corpo della mummia da angoli differenti, adottando una procedura multi-spettro, che copre l'intera gamma delle lunghezze d'onde luminose, dall'infrarosso all'ultravioletto. Ciò ha permesso a quei tatuaggi che oggi non sono più visibili ad occhio nudo di apparire, con grande nitidezza.
I 61 segni marchiati sul corpo di Otzi consistono in linee, della lunghezza variabile da 0.7 a 4 centimetri, più spesso disposte in gruppi di due, tre o quattro linee parallele; sono inoltre presenti due croci. 


La Tabella mostra posizione e forma dei gruppi di tatuaggi. Variano in dimensioni da  1 mm (0.03 inches) e 3 mm (0.1 inches) ed in spessore da 7 mm (0.2 inches) a 40 mm (1.5 inches). La maggior parte consiste di  linee parllele tra loro: ma in due sedi è stata tracciata una croce (cavilgia e ginocchio sinistro) 
[Credit: Samadelli M, SLaschitz Gr/ Eurac-Archaeological Museum Bolzano] 


I nuovi segni scoperti nella parte anteriore-inferiore della 

gabbia toracica di Otzi sono rilevanti perché la maggior parte 

degli altri segni è localizzata nella parte inferiore del dorso, 

negli arti inferiori (tra ginocchia e piede). A proposito delle 

varie differenti sedi, è opinione di alcuni ricercatori che i 

segni fossero parte di un procedimento magico-terapeutico, 

una specie di 'agopuntura' antelitteram per alleviare il dolore 

delle giunture. I segni appena scoperti sulla gabbi toracica 

hanno riaperto il dibattito circa il ruolo del tatuaggio in tempi 

preistorici. Le posizioni si distinguono, comprensibilmente, 

tra sostenitori di una funzione terapeutica, un'altra magico- 

simbolica ed infine una religiosa. 





 
I tatuaggi di Otzi (sopra) si trovano prevalentemente in zone sottoposte a logoramento da trauma o da usura, indirizzando il giudizio degli archeologi verso la pratica dell'agopuntura, un'antichissima pratica contro il fastidio articolare. Le radiografie eseguite in corrispondenza delle zone tatuate hanno rivelato la presenza di aree degenerative che potevano creare dolore.
 [Credit: Samadelli M, SLaschitz Gr/Eurac-Archaeological Museum Bolzano] 


Le fotografie dell'articolo sono state scattate nella cella 

refigerata  destinata alla mummia e sita nel Museo di 

Archeologia del Sud Tirolo. Ciascuna immagine è stata 

scattata sette volte, ogni volta utilizzando una differente 

lunghezza d'onda. Questo ha permesso di raggiungere ogni 

volta uno strato cutaneo di profondità differente, in 

ognuno dei quali poteva essere presente una certa quantità 

di polvere di carbone usata come pigmento per il tatuaggio. 

Le onde ultraviolette si sono dimostrate utili per gli strati 

cutanei superficiali, mentre le infrarosse più adatte agli 

strati profondi.

I risultati completi sono stati pubblicati sul "Journal of 

Cultural Heritage"

Fonte: 
European Academy of Bozen/Bolzano 
[January 27, 2015]


New tattoos discovered on iceman 

Oetzi 


 With the aid of a non-invasive photographic technique, researchers at the EURAC-Institute for Mummies and the Iceman have been able to show up all the tattoos on the man who was found preserved in a glacier, and in the process have stumbled upon a previously unknown tattoo on his ribcage. This tattoo is very difficult to make out with the naked eye because his skin has darkened so much over time. The latest sophisticated photographic technology has now enabled tattoos in deeper skin layers to be identified as well. 



Illustration of Ötzi’s new tattoos (after Samadelli 2009:52).  The dark coloration  of the body markings is probably related to multiple applications  at the same loci over time 
[Credit: © Lars Krutak] 


Oetzi's discoverers had already noticed his tattoos on the very day they found him, 19th September 1991. Various studies since then have investigated and itemised these skin marks. But now, using a technique which he developed himself, Marco Samadelli, a scientist at the EURAC-Institute for Mummies and the Iceman, has carried out a complete mapping of all the tattoos on the man from the glacier. They are amongst the oldest documented tattoos in the world.


Overview tattoos of the Iceman
 [Credit: © Marco Samadelli]



Samadelli photographed the mummy's body from different angles using a multi-spectral procedure which covered the whole range of wavelengths from infrared to ultraviolet. This allowed tattoos deep in the skin layers and which are no longer recognisable to the human eye to be shown up with great precision. The 61 discovered skin markings on Oetzi's body consist of lines from 0.7 to 4 centimetres in length, mostly arranged in groups of two, three or four parallel lines, and also include two crosses. 


This table shows the location and shape of the tattoo groups. They range from  1mm (0.03 inches) and 3mm (0.1 inches) thick and 7mm (0.2 inches) and  40mm (1.5 inches) long. The majority consist of lines running parallel to  each other, but in two locations, including the right knee and left ankle,  these lines form a cross
[Credit: Samadelli M, SLaschitz Gr/ Eurac-Archaeological Museum Bolzano]


The newly discovered tattoos on the lower right-hand side of the ribcage are striking, because the other markings are mostly found on his lower back and the legs between the knee and the foot. On account of the various locations of the tattoos, some researchers suspected that the marks were part of some therapeutic medical treatment, a kind of acupuncture to relieve pain in the joints. The newly discovered tattoos on the ribcage have now reopened the debate about the role of tattoos in prehistoric times. This investigation has given researchers a new piece to add to the jigsaw puzzle when trying to tease out whether prehistoric tattoos had a therapeutic, symbolic or religious significance. 

 
The ice man's tattoos (pictured) are largely seen on parts of the body that endured  wear-and-tear, causing archaeologists to liken the practice to acupuncture - an  ancient treatment for joint distress. Radiological images of the tattooed areas  also show degenerative areas under the tattoos that could have caused pain 
 [Credit: Samadelli M, SLaschitz Gr/Eurac-Archaeological Museum Bolzano]


The multi-spectral photographs were shot in the mummy's specially refrigerated 'cell' in the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology. "Each shot was taken seven times, using a different wavelength each time. This enabled us to cover the different depths at which the carbon powder used for the tattoos had been deposited. The ultraviolet waves were adequate for the upper skin layers, whilst we resorted to infrared light for the lower layers," explains Marco Samadelli. 
The findings are published in the Journal of Cultural Heritage

Source: 
European Academy of Bozen/Bolzano 
[January 27, 2015]