Giants 2
The Woman With Giant Legs
Doctors can’t tell Mandy Sellars why her legs keep expanding – all they say is that her only option is a drastic amputation. She travelled to the US for a new TV show in search of an alternative...It’s not easy being Mandy Sellars. She has hugely outsized legs that make having a normal life nearly impossible.
People stare whenever she leaves the house, she needs a special car to get around and can’t work full time.What’s more, her condition is getting worse and doctors say she needs an amputation so severe she won’t be able to sit up.And she doesn’t even know what’s caused it.
But the cheerful 33-year-old from Accrington, Lancs, just won’t be told. She’s challenged medics’ verdict and has just got back from America where she went to find a new treatment.And now she’s on a mission to find out once and for all what’s the matter with her.
“As you can imagine the size of my legs and clubfoot make walking difficult and I need crutches just to get around my ground floor flat.“And people can be very cruel. I was in a park a few months ago when a group of teens started pointing at me, they were saying to each other, ‘Look at the size of her legs.’
“I wish they could experience how it feels to have strangers laugh at you.“I don’t mind curiosity – it’s the laughing and nudging that gets to me. ”
It’s no wonder some people stare. Mandy’s legs are wider than the average man’s waist and heavier than most women.Her left leg is five inches longer than her right and has a clubfoot, which has turned 180 degrees backwards. She says: “I weigh about 20 stone – 15 of which are my legs.”She has never had a firm diagnosis, but it could be linked to Proteus syndrome, which causes abnormal skin and limb growth. John Merrick, the Elephant Man, is believed to have had it.
“I use an electric wheelchair when I go out,” says Mandy.“I live alone and what takes the average person half an hour takes me an hour, if not longer. Just getting dressed in the morning is a mammoth task.“By the time I go into the kitchen to get breakfast, I can be exhausted. I can’t just pop to the shops, it all has to be planned.”Mandy has a specially adapted hand-controlled car so she can still get out to meet friends and go round for a coffee and a chat.“I try to lead a normal life but I do get frustrated,” she says. “The worst thing about my condition is that my mobility is getting worse and I have no control over it.”
When Mandy was born doctors gave her a week to live.Her left leg was three inches longer than her right, and both were out of proportion. No one knew what her condition was or how to treat it.
Despite the odds, Mandy proved everyone wrong and at 18 months she began walking.“I could never run as fast as my friends but I was still outside playing. I also learned to ride a bike but I kept the stabilisers on until I was 16.“It’s embarrassing now when I think about it, but I didn’t care then,” she says laughing. “My legs started to grow when I was really small. I saw a lot of doctors, then when I was seven, one specialist told my mum I should have my legs amputated.
”Mandy’s mother June, 57, was horrified by the doctor’s suggestion and argued if her daughter could still run and play with friends there was no need to have her legs cut off.“Mum was brave to stand up to the consultant. My parent’s have always been supportive and told me that I can do whatever I want to do.“They realise that they won’t always be here and have encouraged me to be independent, so at 19 I left to live on my own.
“I was a normal teenager – I went out drinking, clubbing and ended the night with a kebab.”After college Mandy went to the University of Central Lancashire where she gained a BSc in psychology.
“I’ve got a quick mind but a full-time job would exhaust me,” she explains. “But I like to make the most of life.”She talks to friends over the internet every day and is in the middle of writing a book about her life.She even finds the energy to head to the local RSCPA rescue centre once a week to clear out the rabbit hutches.But her health keeps getting worse.
She has suffered arthritis, deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and had a blood clot in her leg. She was paralysed from the waist down for two months.
“I had to learn to walk again which took three months,” she says.
“Three years later I bumped my leg and got a blood infection, then my kidneys then failed and I got MRSA.“In all this time and during all of my visits to hospitals, I’ve never been given a definite diagnosis, except to be told it could be a form of this Proteus syndrome.
“No doctor has been investigated to any degree. I was beginning to believe I was the only woman in the world with it.”The situation isn’t going to get better.She says: “As my legs get heavier they’ll put a strain on my heart and internal organs.“I know that amputation and prosthetic legs are my only option to save my life but I’m unhappy with what the UK experts told me.“They said the only way to do the op would be to amputate my left leg from the hip and the right leg above the knee.
“But I wouldn’t be able to sit up and would be even more disabled than now.”So when a TV production company contacted Mandy and said it wanted to make a documentary about her life, and take her to meet US specialists, she didn’t hesitate to say yes.In the US she met renowned orthopaedic surgeon Dr William Ertl and prosthetic whizz Kevin Carroll.The pair has worked together on many challenging cases and Carroll famously made a prosthetic tail for a dolphin.
“What they told me gave me hope,” Mandy says.“They said I could have a far less severe amputation. Now I feel much better informed to make a decision about amputation.
The information I got in the US has been life-changing.”Mandy also now has a UK doctor who is willing to search for the elusive diagnosis.Geneticist Dr Susan Huson, from St Mary’s Hospital, Manchester, is determined to identify Mandy’s condition.While amputation is inevitable and Mandy still faces the biggest dilemma of her life, she’s pleased that some day there may well be a condition in the medical books named after her.
“It could be called Sellars syndrome,” she smiles.“Then I’d go down in history.”
Updated !
35-year-old Mandy Sellars from Accrington in Lancashire first appeared in the documentary 'The Woman with Giant Legs', which achieved record viewer ratings here in the UK in 2008 for Channel Five, beating all other channels in its slot. Mandy's astonishing story continues, as we follow her on a journey of recovery from a life saving amputation and as she has a huge custom-made prosthetic leg made, so she can learn to walk again.
The Incredible Brain (Daniel Tammet)
Daniel Paul Tammet is a British high-functioning autistic savant gifted with a facility for mathematical calculations, sequence memory, and natural language learning. He was born with congenital childhood epilepsy. Experiencing numbers as colors or sensations is a well-documented form of synesthesia, but the detail and specificity of Tammet's mental imagery of numbers is unique. In his mind, he says, each number up to 10,000 has its own unique shape and feel, that he can "see" results of calculations as landscapes, and that he can "sense" whether a number is prime or composite. He has described his visual image of 289 as particularly ugly, 333 as particularly attractive, and pi as beautiful. Tammet not only verbally describes these visions, but also creates artwork, particularly watercolor paintings, such as his painting of Pi.
Tammet holds the European record for memorising and recounting pi to 22,514 digits in just over five hours. He also speaks a variety of languages including English, French, Finnish, German, Spanish, Lithuanian, Romanian, Estonian, Icelandic, Welsh and Esperanto. He particularly likes Estonian, because it is rich in vowels. Tammet is creating a new language called Mänti. Tammet is capable of learning new languages very quickly. To prove this for the Channel Five documentary, Tammet was challenged to learn Icelandic in one week. Seven days later he appeared on Icelandic television conversing in Icelandic, with his Icelandic language instructor saying it was "not human."
Source: Oddee
..autistic savant gifted with a facility for mathematical calculations, sequence memory...
Total Recall: The Woman Who Can't Forget
Ordinary human memory is a mess. Most of us can recall the major events in our lives, but the memory of Homo sapiens pales when compared with your average laptop. It takes us far longer to store data (you might have to hear a phone number five to 10 times before you can repeat it); it's easy for us to forget things we've learned (try reciting anything from your sophomore history class); and it's sometimes hard to dislodge outdated information (St. Petersburg will always remain Leningrad to me). Worse, our memories are vulnerable to contamination and distortion. Lawyers can readily fool us with suggestive questions; false memories can easily be implanted.
Until recently, no one had ever heard of Jill Price. Her friends and family knew her memory was remarkable, but nobody in the scientific community did. Her road to stardom started in June 2000 (Monday, June 5, to be exact), when she stumbled upon a Web page for James McGaugh, a UC Irvine neuroscientist who specializes in learning and memory, and decided to send him an email describing her unusual ability to recall the past. McGaugh wrote back 90 minutes later. He tells me he was skeptical at first, but it didn't take long for him to become convinced that Price was something special; he soon introduced her to two of his collaborators, Larry Cahill and Elizabeth Parker.
The three researchers interviewed Price many times over the next five years, but they kept the story to themselves. Finally, McGaugh and company were ready to share what they had found. In February 2006, their article, "A Case of Unusual Autobiographical Remembering," appeared in the journal Neurocase. Shortly thereafter, the UC Irvine press office peddled the story to The Orange County Register—and Price's world was turned upside down.
Diane Sawyer asks Price, an avid television viewer, to identify certain significant dates in broadcast history.
The most remarkable moment comes when Sawyer asks Price when Princess Grace died. She immediately answers, "September 14, 1982—that was the first day I started 12th grade." For once, it seems that the memory lady has blown it. Sawyer laughs nervously and tries gently to right her guest: "September 10, 1982." Price misunderstands, thinking she's being prompted to identify another event—the possibility that she's being corrected apparently doesn't occur to her. No, Sawyer says, she has made a mistake; according to the book that 20/20's producers were using as a source, Princess Grace died on September 10. Price stands her ground, and not 60 seconds later, a producer breaks in: "The book is wrong." Price is right after all!
The Woman Who Can't Forget (Free Press), her new book with writer Bart Davis, tells the story of the first person ever confirmed by scientists to have such a superior autobiographical memory.
She was studied by memory experts at University of California-Irvine for six years before they reported the feats of "AJ" in an esoteric professional journal in 2006.
Now "AJ" has decided to reveal her identity. She lives in suburban Los Angeles and works as the administrator of a religious school. Price is fleshing out this story in the hope, she says, that others like her will come forward for scientists to study. Exploring clues in the brains of memory "overachievers" might hasten discoveries that could help those with memory problems, experts say.
..meet Jill Price..
The San Pedro Mummy.
The Native peoples of North America told legends of a race of "little people" who lived in the woods near sandy hills and sometimes near rocks located along large bodies of water, such as the Great Lakes. Often described as "hairy-faced dwarfs" in stories, petroglyphs illustrations show them with horns on their head and traveling in a group of 5 to 7 per canoe.
Native Legends often talk of the little people playing pranks on people such as singing and then hiding when an inquisitive person searches for the music. It is often said that the little people love children and would take them away from bad/abusive parents or if the child was without parents and left in the woods to fend for themselves.
Other legends say the little people if seen by an adult human would beg them not to say anything of their existence and would reward those who kept their word by helping them and their family out in times of need. From tribe to tribe there are variations of what the little people's mannerisms were like, and whether they were good or evil may be different. Many of the Elders still have a belief in these beings, but younger generations tend not to believe in these stories.
One of the common beliefs is that the little people create distractions to cause mischief. They were believed to be gods by some. One North American Native Tribe believed that they lived in nearby caves.The caves were never entered for fear of disturbing the little people.
Native American Little People :
Nimerigar - Shoshone
Yumwi - Cherokee
Nunnupi - Comanche
Geow-lud-mo-sis-ing
Menehune - Hawaiian native
Memegwesi/Memegawensi/Memengweshii/Pa'iins - Anishinaabe names
Mannegishi - Cree
Ishigaq - Inuit
The North American version of fairies are actually called the "little people" and reside in the Pryor Mountains of Montana & Wyoming. The Pryors are famous for their "fairy rings" and strange happenings that suggest little people still exist and make their home there. Some members of the Crow Tribe consider the little people to be sacred ancestors and require leaving an offering for them upon entry to the area.
The Pedro Mountain Mummy (also called the Dwarf Mummy of Wyoming) is a small (approximately 40 centimeters or 14 inches)mummified corpse, that was found in 1932 by two prospectors named Cecil Main and Frank Carr in a cave in the Pedro Mountains in Wyoming.
The mummy was put on public display at Jones’ Drug in Meeteetse, Wyoming, before being sold to Ivan Goodman, a Casper, Wyoming, businessman, in the mid-1940s. Thinking it would be a good way to attract business and publicity, Goodman displayed the mummy at his used car lot for several years. The mummy was also displayed publicly at the Rialto Cigar Shop in downtown Casper for a time during the late 1940s.
In 1950, Goodman had the mummy examined by Dr. Harry Shapiro, an anthropologist from the American Museum of Natural History. X-rays showed that it was indeed human but this is where anthropologists and other scientific experts part company. The anthropologists were unanimous in agreement that the mummy was an infant but another group of radiologists and doctors believed the remains were of a 16–65 year old male.
Goodman died in 1950 and the mummy was passed on to Leonard Wadler, a New York businessman, a July 7, 1979, article in the Casper Star-Tribune states. The mummy has not been seen in public since Wadler, who died in the 1980s, took possession of it. The mummy’s whereabouts are currently unknown. After the mummy vanished, its X-rays were examined by George Gill, an anthropology professor at the University of Wyoming in the 1970s. Gill concluded the mummy was the remains of an anencephalic infant, according to a February 3, 2003, Casper Star-Tribune story.
Although the exact nature of the mummy may never be determined, some speculate it to be the remains of a Nimerigar, a race of little people spoken of in the legends of the Shoshone. Others have claimed it was an extraterrestrial . The head was covered in a dark, gelatinous substance, leading some to accuse Main and Carr of perpetrating a hoax using an infant from a medical collection, since some of the mummy appeared to have been preserved in liquid. This mystery will remain until the mummy surfaces and faces a battery of modern day tests.
Source: Wikipedia
The Tollund Man.
The Tollund Man is the naturally mummified corpse of a man who lived during the 4th century BC, during the time period characterised in Scandinavia as the Pre-Roman Iron Age. He was found in 1950 buried in a peat bog on the Jutland Peninsula in Denmark, which preserved his body. Such a find is known as a bog body. Tollund Man, and in particular the head and face, was so well-preserved that at the time of discovery he was mistaken for a recently deceased murder victim .
On May 8, 1950, Viggo and Emil Højgaard from the small village of Tollund were cutting peat for their stove in the Bjældskor Dale peat bog, 12 kilometres (7.5 mi) west of Silkeborg, Denmark.As they worked, they noticed in the peat layer a face so fresh that they could only assume that they had discovered a recent murder victim, and notified the police at Silkeborg. The police were baffled by the body, and in an attempt to identify the time of death, they brought in archaeology professor P. V. Glob. Glob determined that the body was over two thousand years old, most likely murdered, and thrown into the bog as a sacrifice to fertility goddesses.
The Tollund Man lay 50 meters (164 ft) away from firm ground, buried under approximately 2 meters (7 ft) of peat, his body arranged in a fetal position. He wore a pointed skin cap fastened securely under his chin by a hide thong. There was a smooth hide belt around his waist. Additionally, the corpse had a garrote made of hide drawn tight around the neck, and trailing down his back. Other than these, the body was naked. His hair was cropped so short as to be almost entirely hidden by his cap. He was almost clean-shaven, but there was short stubble on his chin and upper lip, suggesting that he had not shaved on the day of his death.
Underneath the body was a thin layer of moss. Scientists know that this moss was formed in Danish peat bogs in the early Iron Age, therefore, the body was suspected to have been placed in the bog approximately 2,000 years ago during the early Iron Age. Subsequent 14C radiocarbon dating of Tollund Man's hair indicated that he died in approximately 400 BC. The acid in the peat, along with the lack of oxygen underneath the surface, had preserved the soft tissues of his body.
Examinations and X-rays showed that the man's head was undamaged, and his heart, lungs and liver were well preserved. Although not elderly, Tollund Man must have been over 20 years old because his wisdom teeth had grown in. The Silkeborg Museum estimated his age as approximately 40 years and height at 161 centimetres (5.3 ft), of comparatively short stature even for the time period. It is likely that the body had shrunk in the bog.
On the initial autopsy report in 1950, doctors concluded that Tollund Man died by hanging rather than strangulation. The rope left visible furrows in the skin beneath his chin and at the sides of his neck. There was no mark, however, at the back of the neck where the knot of the noose would have been located. After a re-examination in 2002, forensic scientists found further evidence to support these initial findings. Although the cervical vertebrae were undamaged (as they often are in hanging victims), radiography showed that while the tongue was undamaged as well, it was distended -- an indication of death by hanging.
The stomach and intestines were examined and tests carried out on their contents. The scientists discovered that the man's last meal had been a kind of porridge made from vegetables and seeds, both cultivated and wild: Barley, linseed, gold of pleasure (Camelina sativa), knotweed, bristlegrass, and chamomile. The barley ingested contained large amounts of ergot fungus found on rotted rye. Ergot is a hallucinogenic substance, leading some researchers to argue that this may have been deliberately taken to alter his mental state. British author John Grigsby argues that Tollund Man may have been killed in the rites of the Goddess Nerthus mentioned by Tacitus in his Germania, in which victims were ritually drowned. In his book Beowulf and Grendel, Grigsby suggests that the ingestion of ergot was part of Nerthus's cult and that the subjugation of this religion by the Danes in the 5th and 6th centuries lay behind the epic tale of Beowulf.
There were no traces of meat in the man's digestive system, and from the stage of digestion it was apparent that the man had lived for 12 to 24 hours after this last meal. In other words, he may not have eaten for up to a day before his death. Although similar vegetable soups were not unusual for people of this time, two interesting things were noted:
The soup contained many different kinds of wild and cultivated seeds. Because these seeds were not readily available, it is likely that some of them were gathered deliberately for a special occasion.
The soup was made from seeds only available near the spring where he was found.
Tollund Man today
The body is displayed at the Silkeborg Museum in Denmark, although only the head is original. Conservation techniques for organic material were insufficiently advanced in the early 1950s for the entire body to be preserved, therefore, the forensic examiners suggested the head be severed and the rest of the body remain unpreserved. Subsequently the body desiccated and the tissue disappeared. In 1987, the Silkeborg Museum reconstructed the body using the skeletal remains as a base. As displayed today, the original head is attached to a replica of the body.
Both feet and the right thumb, being well-conserved by the peat, were also preserved in formalin for later examination. In 1976, the Danish National Police Force made a finger-print analysis, making Tollund Man's thumb print one of the oldest finger-prints on record.
Other Jutland bog bodies
1 ] Similar bog chemistry was at work in conserving Haraldskær Woman, also discovered in Jutland as a mummified Iron Age specimen. Forensic analysis also suggests a violent death, or perhaps a ritualistic sacrifice, due to presence of noose marks and a puncture wound.
2 ] The Grauballe man
Source: Wikipedia
The Grauballe Man.
The Grauballe man is one of the best preserved bog bodies in the world. He was found on April 26, 1952, in a bog near the village of Grauballe in Jutland, Denmark, by a person digging for peat. Carbon dating has determined him to be from around 290 BC. Grauballe Man is currently on display at the Moesgaard Museum near Aarhus, Denmark.
The Grauballe Man is very well preserved with nails and hair in evidence. His fingers were even in good enough condition to allow his fingerprints to be taken. While his hair and beard is well preserved, it has been discoloured by time, as is his skin. No clothing or jewellery was found on or near the body.
The Grauballe Man died from having his throat cut, but he also had a fractured leg. Why he was killed is not known, but maybe for sacrifice. As with several other bog bodies, it is assumed that either a sacrifice or execution as punishment for a crime was the cause of his injuries. He also had a mysterious cord around his neck as discovered by National Geographic. Recent scans have reconstructed his face and revealed a lot of facts about him, including that he was beginning to develop gout and already had arthritis. Other than that, he appears to have been a healthy male, about 30 years old.
The Grauballe Man is the subject of a poem by Seamus Heaney. The Grauballe man had his throat cut deeply and also had been bashed on the head, not long before he died, causing a fractured skull. He also had a fractured left shin, but that happened after he died.The Grauballe man's reason for death is unknown however theories suggest that he was a human sacrifice or that he was executed for some crime.
Source: Wikipedia
Ötzi the Iceman .
Ötzi the Iceman (pronounced [ˈœtsi] and Similaun Man are modern names of a well-preserved natural mummy of a man from about 3300 BC (53 centuries ago). The mummy was found in September of 1991 in the Schnalstal glacier in the Ötztal Alps, near Hauslabjoch on the border between Austria and Italy. The nickname comes from Ötztal (Ötz valley), the region in which he was discovered. He is Europe's oldest natural human mummy, and has offered an unprecedented view of Chalcolithic (Copper Age) Europeans. The body and his belongings are displayed in the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, northern Italy.
Ötzi was found by two German tourists from Nuremberg, Helmut and Erika Simon, on 19 September 1991. The body was at first thought to be a modern corpse, like several others which had been recently found in the region. Lying on its front and frozen in ice below the torso, it was crudely removed from the glacier by the Austrian authorities using a small jackhammer (which punctured the hip of the body) and ice-axes using non-archaeological methods. In addition, before the body was removed from the ice, people were allowed to see it, and some took portions of the clothing and tools as souvenirs. The body was then taken to a morgue in Innsbruck, where its true age was subsequently ascertained.
Subsequent surveys in October 1991 showed that the body had been located 92.56 meters inside Italian territory Since 1998 it has been on display at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, Italy.
The body has been extensively examined, measured, X-rayed, and dated. Tissues and intestinal contents have been examined microscopically, as have the items found with the body. In August 2004, frozen bodies of three Austro-Hungarian soldiers killed during the Battle of San Matteo (1918) were found on the mountain of San Matteo in the Trentino region of Italy. One body was sent to a museum in the hope that research on how the environment affected its preservation will help to find out about Ötzi's past and future evolution.
By current estimates, at the time of his death Ötzi was approximately 1.65 metres (5 ft 5 in) tall, weighed about 50 kilograms (110 lb; 7.9 st) and was about 45 years of age. When his body was found, it weighed 38 kilograms (84 lb; 6.0 st). Because the body was covered in ice shortly after his death, it only partially deteriorated. Analysis of pollen and dust grains and the isotopic composition of his tooth enamel indicate that he spent his childhood near the present village of Feldthurns (Velturno), north of Bolzano, but later went to live in valleys about 50 kilometres further north. Analysis by Franco Rollo's group at the University of Camerino has shown that Ötzi's mitochondrial DNA belongs to the K1 subcluster of the mitochondrial haplogroup K, but that it cannot be categorized into any of the three modern branches of that subcluster. Rollo's group published Ötzi's complete mtDNA sequence in 2008.
Ötzi the Iceman, now housed at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, Italy
Analysis of Ötzi's intestinal contents showed two meals (the last one about eight hours before his death), one of chamois meat, the other of red deer meat. Both were eaten with some grain as well as some roots and fruits. The grain from both meals was a highly processed einkorn wheat bran, quite possibly eaten in the form of bread. There were also a few kernels of sloes (small plumlike fruits of the blackthorn tree). Hair analysis was used to examine his diet from several months before.
Pollen in the first meal showed that it had been consumed in a mid-altitude conifer forest, and other pollens indicated the presence of wheat and legumes, which may have been domesticated crops. Also, pollen grains of hop-hornbeam were discovered. The pollen was very well preserved, with even the cells inside still intact, indicating that it had been fresh (a few hours old) at the time of Ötzi's death, which places the event in the spring. Interestingly, einkorn wheat is harvested in the late summer, and sloes in the autumn; these must have been stored since the year before.
High levels of both copper particles and arsenic were found in Ötzi's hair. This, along with Ötzi's copper axe which is 99.7% pure copper, has led scientists to speculate that Ötzi was involved in copper smelting.
By examining the proportions of Ötzi's tibia, femur and pelvis, Christopher Ruff has determined that Ötzi's lifestyle included long walks over hilly terrain. This degree of mobility is not characteristic of other Copper Age Europeans. Ruff proposes that this may indicate Ötzi was a high-altitude shepherd.
Ötzi apparently had whipworm (Trichuris trichiura), an intestinal parasite. During CT scans, it was observed that three or four of his right ribs had been squashed when he had been lying face down after death, or where the ice had crushed his body. His fingernail (only one was found) shows three Beau's lines indicating he was sick three times in the six months before he died. The last incident, two months before he died, lasted about two weeks.Also, it was found that his epidermis, the outer skin layer, was missing, a natural process from his mummification in ice.
Ötzi had approximately 57 carbon tattoos consisting of simple dots and lines on his lower spine, behind his left knee, and on his right ankle. Using X-rays, it was determined that the Iceman may have had arthritis in these joints. It has been speculated that they may be related to acupuncture.
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 a Czech academic, who said that "because the shoes are actually quite complex, I'm convinced that even 5,300 years ago, people had the equivalent of a cobbler who made shoes for other people." The reproductions were found to constitute such excellent footwear that it was reported that a Czech company offered to purchase the rights to sell them. However, a more recent hypothesis by British archaeologist Jacqui Wood 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 items found with the Iceman were a copper axe with a yew handle, a flint knife with an ash handle, a quiver of 14 arrows with viburnum and 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.
Initially it had been believed that Ötzi died from exposure during a winter storm. Later it was speculated that Ötzi may have been a victim of a ritual sacrifice, perhaps for being a chieftain. This explanation was inspired by theories previously advanced for the first millennium B.C. bodies recovered from peat bogs such as the Tollund Man and the Lindow Man. In 2001 X-rays and a CT scan revealed that Ötzi had an arrowhead lodged in one shoulder when he died, and a matching small tear on his coat. The discovery of the arrowhead prompted researchers to theorize Ötzi died of blood loss from the wound, which would likely have been fatal even if modern medical techniques had been available. Further research found that the arrow's shaft had been removed before death, and close examination of the body found bruises and cuts to the hands, wrists and chest and cerebral trauma indicative of a blow to the head. One of the cuts was to the base of his thumb that reached down to the bone but had no time to heal before his death. Currently it is believed that death was caused by a blow to the head, though researchers are unsure if this was due to a fall, or from being struck with a rock by another person. DNA analysis revealed traces of blood from four other people on his gear: one from his knife, two from the same arrowhead, and a fourth from his coat. Interpretations of the findings were that Ötzi killed two people with the same arrow, and was able to retrieve it on both occasions, and the blood on his coat was from a wounded comrade he may have carried over his back.Ötzi's unnatural posture in death (frozen body, face down, left arm bent across the chest) suggests that the theory of a solitary death from blood loss, hunger, cold and weakness is untenable. Rather, before death occurred and rigor mortis set in, the Iceman was turned on to his stomach in the effort to remove the arrow shaft.
The DNA evidence suggests that he was assisted by companions who were also wounded; pollen and food analysis suggests that he was out of his home territory. The copper axe could not have been made by him alone. It would have required a concerted group tribal effort to mine, smelt and cast the copper axe head. This may indicate that Ötzi was actually part of an armed raiding party involved in a skirmish, perhaps with a neighboring tribe, and this skirmish had gone badly. When the Iceman's mitochondrial DNA was analyzed by Franco Rollo and his colleagues, it was discovered that he had genetic markers associated with reduced fertility. It has been speculated that this may have affected his social acceptance
Source: Wikipedia
The Taklamakan or Tarim Mummies .
The Tarim mummies are a series of mummies discovered in the Tarim Basin in present-day Xinjiang, China, which date from 1800 BCE to 200 CE. Some of the mummies are frequently associated with the presence of the Indo-European Tocharian languages in the Tarim Basin although the evidence is not totally conclusive.
At the beginning of the 20th century European explorers such as Sven Hedin, Albert von Le Coq and Sir Aurel Stein all recounted their discoveries of desiccated bodies in their search for antiquities in Central Asia.Since then many other mummies have been found and analysed, most of them now displayed in the museums of Xinjiang. Most of these mummies were found on the eastern (around the area of Lopnur, Subeshi near Turfan, Kroran, Kumul) and southern (Khotan, Niya, Qiemo) edge of the Tarim Basin.
The earliest Tarim mummies, found at Qäwrighul and dated to 1800 BCE, are of a Caucasoid physical type whose closest affiliation is to the Bronze Age populations of southern Siberia, Kazakhstan, Central Asia, and the Lower Volga.
The cemetery at Yanbulaq contained 29 mummies which date from 1100–500 BCE, 21 of which are Mongoloid—the earliest Mongoloid mummies found in the Tarim basin—and 8 of which are of the same Caucasoid physical type found at Qäwrighul.
Notable mummies are the tall, red-haired "Chärchän man" or the "Ur-David" (1000 BCE); his son (1000 BCE), a small 1-year-old baby with blond hair protruding from under a red and blue felt cap, and blue stones in place of the eyes; the "Hami Mummy" (c. 1400–800 BCE), a "red-headed beauty" found in Qizilchoqa; and the "Witches of Subeshi" (4th or 3rd century BCE), who wore two foot long black felt conical hats with a flat brim. Also found at Subeshi was a man with traces of a surgical operation on his neck, the incision is sewn up with sutures made of horsehair. Surgery was considered heretical in ancient Chinese medical tradition.
Many of the mummies have been found in very good condition, owing to the dryness of the desert and the desiccation of the corpses it induced. The mummies share many typical Caucasoid body features (elongated bodies, angular faces, recessed eyes), and many of them have their hair physically intact, ranging in color from blond to red to deep brown, and generally long, curly and braided. It is not known whether their hair has been bleached by internment in salt. Their costumes, and especially textiles, may indicate a common origin with Indo-European neolithic clothing techniques or a common low-level textile technology. Chärchän man wore a red twill tunic and tartan leggings. Textile expert Elizabeth Wayland Barber, who examined the tartan-style cloth, claims it can be traced back to Anatolia, the Caucasus and the steppe area north of the Black Sea.
DNA sequence data shows that the mummies had haplotype characteristic of western Eurasia in the area of south Russia.
A team of Chinese and American researchers working in Sweden tested DNA from 52 separate mummies, including the mummy denoted "Beauty of Loulan." By genetically mapping the mummies' origins, the researchers confirmed the theory that these mummies were of West Eurasian descent. Victor Mair, a University of Pennsylvania professor and project leader for the team that did the genetic mapping, commented that these studies were:
...extremely important because they link up eastern and western Eurasia at a formative stage of civilization (Bronze Age and early Iron Age) in a much closer way than has ever been done before.
An earlier study by Jilin University had found a mtDNA haplotype characteristic of Western Eurasian populations with Europoid genes.
In 2007 the Chinese government allowed a National Geographic team headed by Spencer Wells to examine the mummies' DNA. Wells was able to extract undegraded DNA from the internal tissues. The scientists extracted enough material to suggest the Tarim Basin was continually inhabited from 2000 BCE to 300 BCE and preliminary results indicate the people, rather than having a single origin, originated from Europe, Mesopotamia, India and other regions yet to be determined.
The textiles found with the mummies are of an early European textile and weave type and are similar to textiles found on the bodies of salt miners in Austria of around 1300 BCE. Anthropologist Irene Good, a specialist in early Eurasian textiles, noted the woven diagonal twill pattern indicated the use of a rather sophisticated loom and, she says, the textile is "the easternmost known example of this kind of weaving technique."
Mair states that "the earliest mummies in the Tarim Basin were exclusively Caucausoid, or Europoid" with east Asian migrants arriving in the eastern portions of the Tarim Basin around 1000 BCE[citation needed] while the Uyghur peoples arrived around the year 842. In trying to trace the origins of these populations, Victor Mair's team suggested that they may have arrived in the region by way of the forbidding Pamir Mountains about 5000 years ago.
This evidence remains controversial. It refutes the contemporary nationalist claims of the present-day Uyghur peoples who claim that they are the indigenous people of Xinjiang, rather than the Han Chinese. In comparing the DNA of the mummies to that of modern day Uyghur peoples, Mair's team found some genetic similarities with the mummies, but "no direct links".
About the controversy Mair has stated that:
The new finds are also forcing a reexamination of old Chinese books that describe historical or legendary figures of great height, with deep-set blue or green eyes, long noses, full beards, and red or blond hair. Scholars have traditionally scoffed at these accounts, but it now seems that they may be accurate.
Chinese scientists were initially hesitant to provide access to DNA samples because they were sensitive about the claims of the nationalist Uyghur who claim the Loulan Beauty as their symbol, and to prevent a pillaging of national monuments by foreigners.
Chinese historian Ji Xianlin says China "supported and admired" research by foreign experts into the mummies. "However, within China a small group of ethnic separatists have styled themselves the descendants of these ancient people". Due to the "fear of fuelling separatist currents" the Xinjiang museum, regardless of dating, displays all their mummies both Tarim and Han, together.
Physical anthropologists propose the movement of at least two Caucasoid physical types into the Tarim basin, which Mallory & Mair (2000:317–318) associate with the Tocharian and Iranian (Saka) branches of the Indo-European language family, respectively.
B. E. Hemphill's biodistance analysis of cranial metrics (as cited in Larsen 2002 and Schurr 2001) has questioned the identification of the Tarim Basin population as European, noting that the earlier population has close affinities to the Indus Valley population, and the later population with the Oxus River valley population. Because craniometry can produce results which make no sense at all (e.g. the close relationship between Neolithic populations in Russia and Portugal) and therefore lack any historical meaning, any putative genetic relationship must be consistent with geographical plausibility and have the support of other evidence.
Han Kangxin (as cited in Mallory & Mair 2000:236–237), who examined the skulls of 302 mummies, found the closest relatives of the earlier Tarim Basin population in the populations of the Afanasevo culture situated immediately north of the Tarim Basin and the Andronovo culture that spanned Kazakhstan and reached southwards into West Central Asia and the Altai.
It is the Afanasevo culture to which Mallory & Mair (2000:294–296, 314–318) trace the earliest Bronze Age settlers of the Tarim and Turpan basins. The Afanasevo culture (c. 3500–2500 BCE) displays cultural and genetic connections with the Indo-European-associated cultures of the Eurasian Steppe yet predates the specifically Indo-Iranian-associated Andronovo culture (c. 2000–900 BCE) enough to isolate the Tocharian languages from Indo-Iranian linguistic innovations like satemization.
Hemphill & Mallory (2004) confirm a second Caucasoid physical type at Alwighul (700–1 BCE) and Krorän (200 CE) different from the earlier one found at Qäwrighul (1800 BCE) and Yanbulaq (1100–500 BCE).
Source: Wikipedia
The Saltman - Zanjan
The Salt Man was discovered in Iran, in the Chehrabad salt mines located on the southern part of the Hamzehlu village, on the west side of the city of Zanjan, in the Zanjan Province. The head and left foot are currently on display in a glass case at the National Museum of Iran in Tehran.
In the winter of 1993, miners came across a body with long hair, a beard and some artifacts. These included the remains of a body, a foreleg inside a leather boot, three iron knives, a woolen half trouser, a silver needle, a sling, parts of a leather rope, a grindstone, a walnut, some pottery shards, some designed textile fragments, and finally a few broken bones. The body had been buried in the middle of a tunnel of approximately 45 meters length.
Three other corpses, including a woman, were discovered later in the same salt mine.
After archeological studies which included C14 dating of different samples of bones and textiles, the saltman was dated to about 1700 years ago. By testing a sample of hair, the blood group B+ was determined.
Three dimensional pictures (scans) show the fractures around the eye and various damages that occurred before death as result of a hard blow. Visual characteristics presented long hair and beard and a golden earring on the left ear indicating that he was a highranked man. But the cause of his presence and death in the salt mine of Chehrabad remains a mystery.
Source: Wikipedia
The Chinchorro mummies
The Chinchorro mummies are mummified remains of individuals from the South American Chinchorro culture found in what is now northern Chile and southern Peru. They are the oldest examples of mummified human remains, dating to thousands of years before the Egyptian mummies. They are believed to have first appeared around 5000 B.C. and reaching a peak around 3000 B.C. Often Chinchorro mummies were elaborately prepared by removing the internal organs and replacing them with vegetable fibers or animal hair. In some cases an embalmer would remove the skin and flesh from the dead body and replace them with clay. Shell midden and bone chemistry suggest that 90% of their diet was seafood. Many ancient cultures of fisherfolk existed, tucked away in the arid river valleys of the Andes, but the Chinchorro made themselves unique by their dedicated preservation of the dead.
The Chinchorro mummies are significant because during the periods of these mummies, everyone who died was mummified, including children, new-borns and fetuses. This shows that it was not reserved for those of high rank or high status - mummification was not a sign of social stratification.
Radiocarbon dating reveals that the oldest, discovered Chinchorro mummy was that of a child from a site in the Camarones Valley, about 60 miles south of Arica and dates from around 5050 B.C. The mummies continued to be made until about 1800 B.C., making them contemporary with Las Vegas culture and Valdivia culture in Ecuador and the Norte Chico civilization in Peru.
The Chinchorro mummies are the earliest examples of the deliberate preservation of the dead. The mummies may have served as a means of assisting the soul in surviving, and to prevent the bodies from frightening the living.
While many cultures throughout the world have sought to preserve the dead elite, the Chinchorro tradition performed mummification on all members of their society, including children and miscarried fetuses. Because of this egalitarian preservation of the dead, hundreds of mummies have been excavated and hundreds more remain. The oldest mummies recovered from the Atacama Desert are dated between 6000 BC and 5000 BC, the oldest yet found. To put this in perspective, the earliest mummy that has been found in Egypt dated around 3000 BC.
The manner in which the Chinchorro mummified their dead changed over the years, but several traits remained constant throughout their history. In excavated mummies, the skin had been set aside and all soft tissues and organs, including the brain, had been removed from the corpse. There is even evidence that the bone marrow was removed from the femurs of one mummy, but this has not yet been identified as a frequent occurrence. After the soft tissues had been removed, the bones were reinforced with sticks and the skin was stuffed with vegetable matter before reassembling the corpse. The mummy was then given a clay mask, though some mummies were completely covered in clay, wrapped in reeds and left to dry out for 30 - 40 days.
The two most common techniques used in Chinchorro mummification were the Black mummies and the Red mummies.
The Black mummy technique (5000 B.C. to 3000 B.C.) involved taking the dead person's body apart, treating it, and reassembling it. The head, arms, and legs were removed; the skin was often removed, too. The body was heat-dried, and the flesh and tissue were completely stripped from the bone. After reassembly, the body was then covered with a white ash paste, filling the nooks and crannies left by the reassembling process. The paste was also used to fill out the person's normal facial features. The person's skin (including facial skin with a wig attachment of short black human hair) was refitted on the body, sometimes in smaller pieces, sometimes in one almost-whole piece. Sometimes sea lion skin was used as well. Then the skin (or, in the case of children, who were often missing their skin layer, the white ash layer) was painted with manganese giving them a black color.
The Red mummy technique (2500 BC to 2000 BC) was a technique in which rather than disassemble the body, many incisions were made in the trunk and shoulders to remove internal organs and dry the body cavity. The head was cut from the body so that the brain could be removed. The body was packed with various materials to return it to somewhat more-normal dimensions, sticks used to strengthen it, and the incisions sewn up. The head was placed back on the body, this time with a wig made from tassels of human hair up to 60 cm long. A "hat" made out of clack clay held the wig in place. Except for the wig and often the (black) face, everything was then painted with red ochre.
Source: Wikipedia
The Ice Maiden
The most famous undisturbed Pazyryk burial so far recovered is the "Ice Maiden" found by archaeologist Natalia Polosmak in 1993, a rare example of a single woman given a full ceremonial wooden chamber-tomb in the 5th century BC, accompanied by six horses. It had been buried over 2,400 years ago in a casket fashioned from the hollowed-out trunk of a larch tree. On the outside of the casket were stylized images of deer and snow leopards carved in leather. Shortly after burial the grave had apparently been flooded by freezing rain and the entire contents of the burial chamber had remained frozen in permafrost. Six horses wearing elaborate harnesses had been sacrificed and lay on the logs which formed the roof of the burial chamber. The maiden's well-preserved body, carefully embalmed with peat and bark, was arranged to lie on her side as if asleep. She was young; her hair was still blonde; she had been 5 feet 6 inches tall. Even the animal style tattoos were preserved on her pale skin: creatures with horns that develop into flowered forms. Her coffin was made large enough to accommodate the high felt headdress she was wearing, which had 15 gilded wooden birds sewn to it. On a gold buckle retrieved from another tomb, a similar woman's headdress intertwined with branches of the tree of life are depicted. Her blouse was originally thought to be made of wild "tussah" silk but closer examination of the fibers indicate the material is not Chinese but was a wild silk which came from somewhere else, perhaps India. She was clad in a long crimson woolen skirt and white felt stockings. Near her coffin was a vessel made of yak horn, and dishes containing gifts of coriander seeds: all of which suggest that the Pazyryk trade routes stretched across vast areas of iran. Similar dishes in other tombs was thought to have held Cannabis sativa, confirming a practice described by Herodotus but after tests the mixture was found to be coriander seeds, probably used to disguise the smell of the body.
Two years after the discovery of the "Ice Maiden" Dr. Polosmak's husband, Vyacheslav Molodin, found a frozen man, elaborately tattooed with an elk, with two long braids that reached to his waist, buried with his weapons.
Source: experiencefestival
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