
What Ötzi the Iceman’s Tattoos Reveal About Copper Age Medical Practices - Thevet
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/what-otzi-icemans-tattoos-reveal-about-copper-age-medical-practices-180970244/?no-ist
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ilamont
Photos here:

[http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2015/01/30/scienti...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2015/01/30/scientists-
mapped-otzi-icemans-61-tattoos/#.W5xhfS2ZNTZ)

Not at all like modern tattoos. I wasn't expecting anchors and skulls, but
these are very simple and don't appear to have any rounded edges.

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mc32
What's striking to me is that they appear "precise", so it required training
and technique. It wasn't some kind of amateur inking.

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saalweachter
> the tattoos, which were created via small incisions traced with charcoal

That makes me assume that each of line was made with a single straight-line
cut that was rubbed with charcoal.

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jlj
PBS (US) had a show covering this the other night. The tattoo locations
corresponded to areas of arthritis. Also carried different fungi, one for fire
starter, another for antisceptic.

Interesting that the tattoos, tools, and medicine pointed to a level of
specialization that would have been supported by agricultural civilization,
not by hunter gathers.

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ljf
Interested in that statement (I know little about this area) but why do you
say that specialisation would only occur in an agricultural civilisation?

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lsc
The theory goes that hunter gatherers have to spend a lot more time just
getting enough food to survive, and don't generate the surplus food to
dedicate people to medicine or to manufacturing.

My understanding is that this is not very controversial within academic
circles, but outside of academia, I personally know a lot of people who seem
to think that living off the land is easy and would leave you with a lot of
free time.

The other argument is one of density. For specialization, you need enough
people nearby for the specialist to trade with. Hunter-gatherers need a lot
more space per person than agricultural societies. In a hunter-gatherer
society, you'd have to travel a lot further, potentially while carrying food
and trade goods, to get to that doctor or that smith.

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skookumchuck
I doubt people would transition to agriculture if it was harder than living
off the land.

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lsc
> I doubt people would transition to agriculture if it was harder than living
> off the land.

I'm mostly with you, so I'm not good at summarizing the other side's point.
But I think there are several reasonable assumptions they talk about where
they might be right:

1: these people usually assume that very low population densities are
desirable (I mean, obviously, that's a prerequisite for hunter gatherer
society) This is their strongest point, really, that no matter how fertile the
area you live in, once you get more than a certain population density, you
need to go agricultural or you need to starve.

2: before agriculture, perhaps people only lived in the areas where food was
super plentiful naturally. It's totally possible, maybe even likely that there
used to be more areas like that than there were after history started being
recorded. - this argument is reasonable, but it's mostly a callback to 1. An
active human eats a lot, and it doesn't take a whole lot of humans to deplete
just about any eden.

I mean, the obvious counterpoint within this context is that density really
helps encourage specialization, so even if the life of a low-density hunter-
gatherer is easier, it's not going to involve a whole lot of specialization.

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marci
Regarding 2', many groups of humans found ways to live in the most remote and
barren places on earth (the Arctic regions, the Australian desert...) for up
to 18000 years.

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AvocadoPanic
What's with all the acupuncture?

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saalweachter
My understanding is that acupuncture evolved from earlier bloodletting
practices which were common throughout Eurasia.

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newnewpdro
This can't even qualify as pseudo-science.

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AvocadoPanic
Faux-science?

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newnewpdro
Whatever category reading tarot cards and tea leaves falls under...

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cobbzilla
If said tarot cards and tea leaves are 5000+ years old, then studying them
could certainly be done scientifically.

