Discovered in the Alpine Tyrol in 1991, the mummy of a man who had lain in the ice for 5,300 years has caused a strange prejudice to appear in the minds of scientists around the world. According to superstition, the mummy, named Otzi, casts a curse on the scientists who dealt with it.
At least seven of them died strange deaths. The last to die was Australian archaeologist Tom Loy - he was found dead at his home in early November 2005. Many scientists refuse to work with Otzi out of fear of incurring a curse.
STUNNING MATCH
Professor Tom Loy has always been punctual. Therefore, when the head of the laboratory at the Australian Institute of Molecular Biology at the University of Queensland did not show up for work, colleagues became worried. First they tried to get through to the professor, then went to his house. The 63-year-old biologist did not answer the doorbells. Neighbors, as it turned out, did not see him for several days either. Law enforcement officers summoned by Loy's colleagues broke down the door. Dead Tom lay in bed. Apparently he died in his sleep.
On the table they found a pile of sheets of paper covered with writing. Before his death, the professor worked on a manuscript of a book dedicated to the oldest human mummy. It was Loy who at one time refuted the version of the death of an ancient man from a hunting accident.
Journalists, who found out that Tom Loy worked with Otzi, immediately wrote that he was the next, seventh victim of the mummy's curse.
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Why did the scientist die after all? It turned out that he had a hereditary blood disease, which resulted in blood clots. But one more curious detail also turned out. The first signs of the disease appeared about 14 years ago, shortly after Loy returned from Europe, where he examined Otzi's mummy …
FIRST AND NOT LAST
The first victim of the curse of the ancient mummy was 64-year-old Rainer Henn, one of the largest European criminologists. He died in a car accident, the cause of which was never established. Henn was on his way to a conference where he was supposed to give a talk on … Ice Man. The tragedy happened a year after the mummy was found. It is known that at one time it was Henn who participated in the process of transporting the mummy to the nearest laboratory.
The next was the conductor Kurt Fritz, who helped transport the Iceman to Innsbruck by helicopter. He later died in an avalanche. It is strange that this happened in an area that he knew like the back of his hand. But the most surprising thing is that, apart from him, none of the tourists in the group were injured.
Australian journalist Reiner Holtz became famous throughout the world for the film about the Iceman. Shortly after its first broadcast on television, the documentary filmmaker fell ill and died a few months later. Doctors said the cause of death was a brain tumor. However, the journalist's relatives claim that three months before the film's premiere, he underwent a full medical examination, and then there was no trace of a tumor.
DEATH IN THE MOUNTAINS
Not spared the curse, if it exists, of course, and the main culprit of the sensation - the German Helmut Simon, who discovered Otzi. Helmut was very worried that he received little money from the authorities for finding the mummy, and demanded material compensation. After lengthy proceedings, a resident of Nuremberg sued the municipality of Bolzano, an Italian town in the Northern Alps, 50 thousand euros, but did not manage to get them.
In mid-October 2004, 69-year-old Simon, a great mountain lover, decided to climb the Garm-skarkogel mountain located near Salzburg. The height of the mountain is only 2,100 meters, so the ascent was not difficult. However, the elderly tourist did not return in the evening. The frozen body of Helmut was found eight days later in a stream flowing along the bottom of the gorge.
Less than an hour after Simon's funeral, Dieter Warnecke, a hunter who actively participated in the search and found his corpse, died completely unexpectedly for everyone. Death, according to doctors, came as a result of a severe heart attack. However, in the heart of Varneke, according to friends and family, he never complained …
LOOKING INTO THE WATER
"You also tell me that the next victim will be me!" - Konrad Spidler laughed, answering journalists' questions about the curse of the Iceman. Nevertheless, the 66-year-old professor at the University of Innsbruck, who led a group of scientists who investigated the mummy, died in mid-April 2005. The official cause of death is the complications caused by multiple sclerosis …
The seven deaths are certainly no joke. Unsurprisingly, the result is a sinister theory of another mummy curse. The Iceman, according to her supporters, was angry with people for disturbing his sleep, which lasted more than five thousand years.
REMBO OF STONE AGE
What is this mummy that mercilessly cracks down on those who disturbed her sleep? On September 19, 1991, on the Similaun Alpine Glacier, located at an altitude of 3,200 meters above sea level, Helmut Simon and his wife Erica stumbled upon a mummified human body. At first it was decided that the body of a climber or a lost skier was found in the ice, but scientists quickly established that the find was 5,300 years old. Otzi (as it was named after the place of discovery) is the oldest and well-preserved human mummy thanks to natural freezing.
Otzi was short (158 centimeters) male, 45-46 years old. By Neolithic standards, this is more than a venerable age. Now he would correspond to a ripe old age. So the Ice Man can rightfully be called a long-liver.
Peter Vanesis, professor of forensic medicine at the University of Glasgow, created the face of the Iceman using computer graphics. The distant ancestor of modern Italians and Austrians had rather wide cheekbones, but in general his face is similar to the faces of our contemporaries.
He carried a bag of dried fruits and other food wrapped in moss over his shoulder. On the head - a bear hat, on the legs - grass-warmed gaiters made of goatskin with bear leather insoles. A deerskin jacket and a raincoat made of grass and lime bark protected the Otzi from the rain. Alpine shepherds wore similar robes as far back as the nineteenth century.
The Ice Man was armed with the latest military technology: a bronze ax, a flint dagger, a yew bow, and a quiver with 14 arrows hung behind his back. Otzi carried with him coals, with which he kindled a fire. In the "medicine cabinet" was a birch mushroom with antiseptic properties.
On the tattooed body of a distant ancestor of Europeans, scientists have found many puncture marks with a very sharp object. It seems that more than five thousand years ago, the beneficial effect of acupuncture on the human body was already known.
The Ice Man is now kept in a specially built museum in Bolzano. For better safety, the temperature of -6 ° C and humidity of 99% are constantly maintained in the refrigerator. The mummy is taken out every month and, after careful examination, is sprayed with distilled water, which freezes and forms a thin protective ice crust.
Why did Otzi die?
Scientists tried to determine the cause of the Iceman's death in June 2001. The mummy was thawed and during a thorough examination made an amazing find. Under the left shoulder was a two-centimeter fragment of an arrow that penetrated 5 centimeters into the body and stuck near the lung. The arrow damaged blood vessels and nerves. After receiving the wound, Otzi lived for several hours and died an agonizing death.
Deciding that the killer was a rival hunter, into whose territory Otzi invaded, the scientists considered the riddle solved and calmed down.
Meanwhile, archaeologist Johan Reinhard of the National Geographic Society, famed for finding mummified children in the Andes sacrificed by the Incas, proposed a very interesting, albeit controversial, theory of Otzi's death. Reinhardt believes that Otzi was sacrificed to the gods who lived on the snowy peaks of the Alps. According to the American anthropologist, the place where Otzi was found is the best suited for ritual sacrifice.
The location of the murder is not the only argument made by Johan Reinhard in defense of his theory. He drew attention to the fact that Ice Man's things were neatly laid out next to the corpse, which somehow does not really correspond to the version of sudden violent death. In addition, 12 of the 14 arrows in his quiver did not have flint tips and, therefore, were not suitable for hunting.
The bronze ax is a very rare and valuable tool in those distant times. However, he was put next to the corpse, but not taken away. It is hard to believe that a hunter who killed a stranger who invaded his territory would leave such a valuable trophy at the scene of the murder.
The Hop Mouth Dust found in the Ice Man's stomach allowed him to establish the time of death. This plant blooms from March to June. Consequently, Otzi was killed in the spring.
OTZI DOESN'T GIVE UP
Despite intense search and research, scientists are forced to admit that Otzi is still a man of mystery.
As more and more analytical results appeared, specialists had to abandon old theories and put forward new ones. So it was not possible, for example, to establish his occupation. At first, it was decided that the Ice Man could be a shepherd or a hunter, but traces of copper found in his hair could indicate that he was also involved in mining, that is, he was an ancient miner.
In general, there are much more questions than answers. And most likely, we will never know who he was and why he died. But is it worth grieving about this? After all, it is much more important that thanks to the find in the Alps, we now better know how our distant ancestors lived in the III millennium BC.
As for the curse of the Ice Man mummy, it is quite obvious that it not only does not scare away potential visitors to the museum in Bolzano, but, on the contrary, attracts. There are more and more tourists who want to tickle their nerves every day!
Zakhar RADOV