Iceman

The axe of "Otzi the Iceman (well-preserved mummy dated to 3300 BC) is made from copper. 

The reddish metal was already known in prehistoric times. It occasionally occurs as a native metal, but mostly in conspicuous green ores, from which it is extracted relatively easily. It is convenient to work, but not very hard. Not very optimal as a tool ("Otzi the Iceman" had a copper axe with him). Only through the addition of tin is the more useful bronze obtained. Its zinc alloy is the versatile and widely used brass. Copper is one of the coinage metals. Water pipes are commonly made of copper. Its very good thermal and electrical conductivity is commonly exploited (cable ), as well as its durability (roofs, gutters), as the verdigris (basic copper carbonate) protects the metal. Cu phthalocyanines are the most beautiful blue pigments. Seems to be essential to all life as a trace element. In some molluscs, Cu replaces Fe in the heme complex. A 70-kg human contains 72 mg. 

Gove, H. E. (1999), From Hiroshima to the Iceman The Development and Applications of Accelerator Mass Spectrometry, Institute of Physics, Bristol. 

Mayer, B. X., Reiter, C. and Bereuter, T. L. (1997) Investigation of thetriacylglycerol composition of iceman s mummified tissue by high temperature gas chromatography. Journal of Chromatography, B 692, 1 6. 

The case of Oetzi (or the Iceman), the frozen mummy found in 1991 on the Alps on the border between Austria and Italy and now kept at the Archaeological Museum of Bolzano (Italy), is also well known. AMS radiocarbon measurements from the laboratories of Zurich[78] and Oxford[79] on tissue and bone samples from the Iceman dated him to 4550 19 years BP. When calibrated, this radiocarbon age corresponds to three probable calendar time intervals between 3350 BC and 3100 BC. Consistent measurements were obtained by dating some of his equipment and also botanic remains from the discovery site. [80] In this context, it is important to note that dating of Oetzi represents a good example of the relevance of the behaviour of the calibration curve in the final precision of a radiocarbon measurement. Actually, in this case, despite a very high precision of the radiocarbon age ( 19 years), the special trend in the calibration curve around the dated period, i.e. in particular the so-called wiggles, prevents a more exact and unambiguous absolute age determination. 

W. Kutschera and W. Mueller, Isotope language of the Alpine Iceman investigated with AMS and MS, Nucl. Instrum. Methods B 204, 705 719 (2003). 

Approximately 5000 years ago, a man set out to climb the Tyrolean Alps on the Austrian-Italian border. At death, he was between 40 and 50 years old and suffered from several medical ailments. Some scientists believe he was caught in a heavy snowfall, fell asleep, and froze to death. Others suppose he was murdered during his journey. Either way, his body was covered with snow almost immediately and, due to the freezing weather, rapidly became a mummy - The Iceman . In 1991, his body was re-exposed and discovered by climbers in the Otzal Alps, explaining why the Iceman , as he was called, was given the nickname Otzi (or, more commonly, as just Otzi). 

The BBC Website has a page dedicated to Otzi the Iceman, with some nice pictures go to http //www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2001/iceman.shtml, which also reproduces the full transcript of an hour-long documentary. 

For a briefer scientific analysis of Otzi, Archeological Chemistry (above) devotes a small case study to Otzi, see its p. 251 ff. And several Websites are devoted to him, including http //info.uibk.ac.at/c/c5/c552/Forschung/Iceman/iceman-en.html and the French site http //www.archeobase.com/v texte/otzi/corp/cor.htm. 

Kurt Varmuza was bom in 1942 in Vienna, Austria. He studied chemistry at the Vienna University of Technology, Austria, where he wrote his doctoral thesis on mass spectrometry and his habilitation, which was devoted to the field of chemometrics. His research activities include applications of chemometric methods for spectra-structure relationships in mass spectrometry and infrared spectroscopy, for structure-property relationships, and in computer chemistry, archaeometry (especially with the Tyrolean Iceman), chemical engineering, botany, and cosmo chemistry (mission to a comet). Since 1992, he has been working as a professor at the Vienna University of Technology, currently at the Institute of Chemical Engineering. 

The data used in this example are from anthropology. A set of n 34 tissue samples from human mummies and references have been characterized by the concentrations of eight fatty acids (m = 8). These data have been selected from a larger data set worked out and evaluated in a project about the Tyrolean Iceman (Makristathis et al. 2002 Varmuza et al. 2005). 

At the left side of the plot are all samples from mummies exhibiting adipocere (glacier, lake, iceman), indicating a similarity of these samples. 

Iceman samples are within the cluster of glacier bodies, thus confirming other results about the origin of this mummy (and not confirming speculations, the iceman may be a fake). 

For comparison the same fatty acid data have been visualized by Sammon s NLM with parameter p set to 1 which makes a local mapping preserving well the small distances between objects (Figure 3.25, left). The NLM result shows a compact cluster of the fresh reference samples (class 6), and somewhat separated the desert sample (5). The horizontal map coordinate separates fresh samples from the high mountain samples (4) and the other samples (glacier samples, 2 lake samples, 3 and iceman samples, 1). The clustering has been indicated by manually drawn ellipses it is very similar as obtained with the scores of the PCI and PC2. Furthermore, Figure 3.25... 

Fresh reference samples (class 6), samples from Glacier samples (2), lake samples high mountain Ampato (4), and from desert (5) (3), and iceman samples (1)... 

Application of multivariate statistics to fatty acid data from the Tyrolean Iceman and other mummies is a mosaic stone in the investigation of this mid-European ancestor, which is still a matter of research (Marota and Rollo 2002 Murphy et al. 2003 Nerlich et al. 2003). The iceman is on public display in the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, Italy, stored at —6°C and 98% humidity, the conditions as they probably were during the last thousands of years. 

Otzi the Iceman, and some artifacts found around his body (Werner Nosko/EPA/Corbis]... 

The mummy only weighs about 30 poimds (13 kg) and is about five feet (1.54 m) in length, but because of shrinkage this does not reflect the Iceman s true physique. According to the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, Italy, which houses the body, the living Otzi would have been about 63 inches tall (1.6 m) and weighed 110 pounds (50 kg). 

Because tooth enamel forms only once, its structure supplies a snapshot of the time of tooth formation, which occurs early in life. The tissues and structures of the body are built from elements supplied by food and water. For enamel, these elements consist of those that were available during childhood. The key to identifying where the Iceman spent his childhood comes from the variation in isotopes that occur in different regions. 

By examining Otzi s teeth and bones and comparing their isotope ratios to those foimd in the nearby environments, archaeologists can get clues about where the Iceman grew up and where he spent his adulthood. (More precisely, these measurements indicate where Otzi s food and water came from. But in this ancient era, Otzi would have probably obtained most or perhaps all of the necessities of Ufe from the local area.) Teeth enamel provide clues of childhood environment, and bone, which gets remade every decade or two, indicates a more recent abode. 

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