Ötzi the Lyme Mummy (2019)(vetmed.illinois.edu)
vetmed.illinois.edu
Ötzi the Lyme Mummy (2019)
https://vetmed.illinois.edu/i-tick/2019/08/09/iceman-lyme-mummy-tattle-the-tick-blog/
24 comments
For those unaware, this was probably posted today because the origin of Lyme disease came up in RFK, Jr.'s Senate confirmation hearings today. He was asked if he had indeed claimed that "Lyme disease is a highly likely militarily engineered bioweapon" and he responded that he "probably did say that".
Old Lyme resident here, high school class of 82 - it was the younger siblings of my classmates who were getting "Lyme arthritis" starting in the late 70s or maybe 1980.
Like most of the populated Northeast, most the area was cleared farmland or grazing land until WWI or maybe WWII - all those stone walls in the middle of the woods used to be borders between open fields. I don't think there was an ecosystem that could support Lyme disease near where people lived until maybe the 70s - the cycle needs both deer and mice, in proximity to humans to get infected, and you're not going to get either of them on open land that's grazed or under cultivation.
So Lyme disease could have been around long before that, farther into the woods, and probably wouldn't have been noticed by people who had good enough doctors to figure out what was going on, or were healthy (rich?) enough for the symptoms of Lyme disease to be considered something out of the ordinary.
The fact that Lyme disease exists in Europe already seemed to indicate that it's been around a very long time, but this finding adds more evidence. For that matter, I wonder if it's yet another disease that was introduced to the Americas by Europeans?
Like most of the populated Northeast, most the area was cleared farmland or grazing land until WWI or maybe WWII - all those stone walls in the middle of the woods used to be borders between open fields. I don't think there was an ecosystem that could support Lyme disease near where people lived until maybe the 70s - the cycle needs both deer and mice, in proximity to humans to get infected, and you're not going to get either of them on open land that's grazed or under cultivation.
So Lyme disease could have been around long before that, farther into the woods, and probably wouldn't have been noticed by people who had good enough doctors to figure out what was going on, or were healthy (rich?) enough for the symptoms of Lyme disease to be considered something out of the ordinary.
The fact that Lyme disease exists in Europe already seemed to indicate that it's been around a very long time, but this finding adds more evidence. For that matter, I wonder if it's yet another disease that was introduced to the Americas by Europeans?
I actually was under the impression that Lyme disease was a new world disease introduced to Europe after contact, but it seems it was endemic to both continents for thousands of years prior, not clear where it originated as the sources contradict each other. Seems like Europe is more likely.
>In all, 33 different combinations of the housekeeping genes were found. The study's findings appear to show that Borrelia burgdorferi originated in Europe but that the species has been present in North America for a long time. The researchers suggest its re-emergence there in the 1970s occurred after the geographic territory of the tick that carries the bacteria expanded, for example through the restoration of woodland.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080629142805.h...
>A team of researchers led by the Yale School of Public Health has found that the Lyme disease bacterium is ancient in North America, circulating silently in forests for at least 60,000 years—long before the disease was first described in Lyme, Connecticut, in 1976 and long before the arrival of humans.
https://medicine.yale.edu/news-article/ancient-history-of-ly...
>In all, 33 different combinations of the housekeeping genes were found. The study's findings appear to show that Borrelia burgdorferi originated in Europe but that the species has been present in North America for a long time. The researchers suggest its re-emergence there in the 1970s occurred after the geographic territory of the tick that carries the bacteria expanded, for example through the restoration of woodland.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080629142805.h...
>A team of researchers led by the Yale School of Public Health has found that the Lyme disease bacterium is ancient in North America, circulating silently in forests for at least 60,000 years—long before the disease was first described in Lyme, Connecticut, in 1976 and long before the arrival of humans.
https://medicine.yale.edu/news-article/ancient-history-of-ly...
Fascinating!
Living in Europe nearby, I've visited the museum multiple times in the past decade. It's one of my favorite standbys to take relatives or friends to. Can't recommend it—and Bolzano, or Bozen, depending on whether you lean Italian or German—enough!
Living in Europe nearby, I've visited the museum multiple times in the past decade. It's one of my favorite standbys to take relatives or friends to. Can't recommend it—and Bolzano, or Bozen, depending on whether you lean Italian or German—enough!
nice to see my hometown mentioned on hn :)
> He actually passed away from a spear in his shoulder
Everyone only remotely familiar with Ötzi knows that it was an arrowhead, not a spear that was found lodging in his shoulder.
Everyone only remotely familiar with Ötzi knows that it was an arrowhead, not a spear that was found lodging in his shoulder.
My head canon was that he was shot by an archer, tried to run and successfully hid but succumbed to his injuries. That’s the only (in my mind) reason why his attackers would leave his belongings on/near him, especially his valuable axe
My personal speculation is somewhat different. I think it is unlikely that he was travelling alone. If the skirmish involved multiple people on both sides and neither side was able to completely eliminate the other on the spot, the action could have rapidly moved away from that location. In addition, the area of the skirmish, including his body, was quickly covered in snow afterwards. In this bad weather probably no one returned to the site in the following days, and if someone did, everything would have been hidden under a blanket of snow.
Hm that certainly sounds plausible, I’m curious if other items would be nearby that could have been dropped by the other combatants? Or maybe items that were attributed to being on his person were in fact from that scuffle (such as the broken arrows). It’s always fun speculating and talking about this with others, had to jump on the opportunity to share my theory haha
[deleted]
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2012.10130
Is the grandparent of this article and is not near as annoying to read. Can we replace the link?
Is the grandparent of this article and is not near as annoying to read. Can we replace the link?
The dedicated website is also more informative (though pretty high level): https://www.iceman.it/en/the-mummy/
_Examination…put his likely age to be around 45. This was a good age considering the short life expectancy 5300 years ago.
I think this is an urban myth.
Edit: Seems like I was thinking wrong, see below.
The average life expectancy 200 years ago (ie the time we did comprehensive and complete records of births and deaths of a population) was indeed much lower than today. But a huge part of that was a high child mortality rate of around 50% until adolescence was reached. Once a person grew beyond that age, it‘s life expectancy was just a few years below of where we are today. There is no reason to believe that this was different a few millenias ago. The reason that child mortality dropped substantially around the end of the 19th century was 1. the discovery of the importance of hygiene and 2. antibiotics.
I think this is an urban myth.
Edit: Seems like I was thinking wrong, see below.
The average life expectancy 200 years ago (ie the time we did comprehensive and complete records of births and deaths of a population) was indeed much lower than today. But a huge part of that was a high child mortality rate of around 50% until adolescence was reached. Once a person grew beyond that age, it‘s life expectancy was just a few years below of where we are today. There is no reason to believe that this was different a few millenias ago. The reason that child mortality dropped substantially around the end of the 19th century was 1. the discovery of the importance of hygiene and 2. antibiotics.
" Once a person grew beyond that age, it‘s life expectancy was just a few years below of where we are today."
I strongly disagree. Every single archeological study that I read and that examined ages of skeletons excavated from normal European cemeteries (= not kingly burials etc.) indicated that people over 60 used to be fairly rare (less than one in 10), even in the Early Modern Era, much less so in the Middle Ages. In the Early Middle Ages, with their hunger and frequent raids, even 50 was untypical.
Even the most important people of the past, for whom we actually know their ages at death, died way earlier than we do today.
Try enumerating the English or the French kings who lived to be 70. Not many, a few individuals over a span of a millennium. It only started getting better post 1750, and really better since 1900.
I strongly disagree. Every single archeological study that I read and that examined ages of skeletons excavated from normal European cemeteries (= not kingly burials etc.) indicated that people over 60 used to be fairly rare (less than one in 10), even in the Early Modern Era, much less so in the Middle Ages. In the Early Middle Ages, with their hunger and frequent raids, even 50 was untypical.
Even the most important people of the past, for whom we actually know their ages at death, died way earlier than we do today.
Try enumerating the English or the French kings who lived to be 70. Not many, a few individuals over a span of a millennium. It only started getting better post 1750, and really better since 1900.
Interesting! I admit that I never saw a study like that. I tried googling it unsucessfully so I asked chatgpt:
Caclculate the average life span of french kings who died on natural causes in the last 1000 years. Please return a single number.
* The average lifespan of French kings who died of natural causes over the last 1000 years is approximately 58 years.
This number reflects those kings who did not die in battle, through assassination, or from other violent causes, focusing instead on those who died due to illness, old age, or other non-violent factors. *
Assuming that chatgpt can read wikipedia pages correctly, it seems that you are right, thanks! If you happen to have links for those archeological studies, I‘d gladly read them.
Caclculate the average life span of french kings who died on natural causes in the last 1000 years. Please return a single number.
* The average lifespan of French kings who died of natural causes over the last 1000 years is approximately 58 years.
This number reflects those kings who did not die in battle, through assassination, or from other violent causes, focusing instead on those who died due to illness, old age, or other non-violent factors. *
Assuming that chatgpt can read wikipedia pages correctly, it seems that you are right, thanks! If you happen to have links for those archeological studies, I‘d gladly read them.
You could check actual actuarial tables and population wide statistics from the 1700s and 1800s directly. You'll see that young people were many times more likely to die in their 20s and 30s than they are now. e.g. as late as mid 1800s almost ~30% of those who reached 20 died before they were 50. The proportion is about 10x lower these days.
> Assuming that chatgpt can read wikipedia pages correctly
I gave it a pdf of the Wikipedia page, it wrote a Python script and calculated that it was:
37 years all causes and 46 only natural.
(https://chatgpt.com/share/679aafa9-7ac8-800a-8f4c-3ba67f4502...)
Of course I'm too lazy to check if it's correct.
However I don't think this data is necessarily at all that meaningful because it only includes who lived long enough to become king.
e.g. Louis XIV died at 76, his first son died at 49, next son who reached adulthood died at 16. His first grandson died when he was 29. Finally he was succeeded by the third son of his grandson (first to reach adulthood). So naturally the "sample" overrepresents those who had an average than longer lifespan.
> Assuming that chatgpt can read wikipedia pages correctly
I gave it a pdf of the Wikipedia page, it wrote a Python script and calculated that it was:
37 years all causes and 46 only natural.
(https://chatgpt.com/share/679aafa9-7ac8-800a-8f4c-3ba67f4502...)
Of course I'm too lazy to check if it's correct.
However I don't think this data is necessarily at all that meaningful because it only includes who lived long enough to become king.
e.g. Louis XIV died at 76, his first son died at 49, next son who reached adulthood died at 16. His first grandson died when he was 29. Finally he was succeeded by the third son of his grandson (first to reach adulthood). So naturally the "sample" overrepresents those who had an average than longer lifespan.
Ask it to show you the list of kings and their ages and calculate the average yourself. I'll bet the answer is not 58 years. Regardless of the accuracy of the source data, ChatGPT is terrible at arithmetic. I asked the same question, and it told me the answer was 55 years.
I once asked ChatGPT how high a stack of floppy disks that holds 1TB would be. It returned 1.5 meters, which is clearly implausible to anyone who remembers how high a stack of floppy disks to install Windows 95 was. Obvs the model has improved over time as it now returns a more plausible 2.65 kM.
I once asked ChatGPT how high a stack of floppy disks that holds 1TB would be. It returned 1.5 meters, which is clearly implausible to anyone who remembers how high a stack of floppy disks to install Windows 95 was. Obvs the model has improved over time as it now returns a more plausible 2.65 kM.
A somewhat related comment:
a. Until the 12th century or so, dates of birth even for kings are somewhat fuzzy, sometimes not even the year is certain. Deaths are usually better recorded, but anyway, there will be some systemic uncertainty there.
b. When evaluating whether a particular king's death was natural or not (the GP wanted to exclude non-natural deaths), we must take into account that a successful poisoning might look like sudden-onset gastritis or so, and that kings were absolutely a plausible target for such attacks. It works both ways; Ladislaus the Posthumous (died 1457) was widely suspected to have been poisoned, only a detailed scientific examination of his skeleton in the 1980s proved that cause of his death was a non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
a. Until the 12th century or so, dates of birth even for kings are somewhat fuzzy, sometimes not even the year is certain. Deaths are usually better recorded, but anyway, there will be some systemic uncertainty there.
b. When evaluating whether a particular king's death was natural or not (the GP wanted to exclude non-natural deaths), we must take into account that a successful poisoning might look like sudden-onset gastritis or so, and that kings were absolutely a plausible target for such attacks. It works both ways; Ladislaus the Posthumous (died 1457) was widely suspected to have been poisoned, only a detailed scientific examination of his skeleton in the 1980s proved that cause of his death was a non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
I had it extract the data from the page directly and actually calculate it:
https://chatgpt.com/share/679aafa9-7ac8-800a-8f4c-3ba67f4502...
It claims it's ~47 (only natural causes). I'm too lazy to verify it of course...
https://chatgpt.com/share/679aafa9-7ac8-800a-8f4c-3ba67f4502...
It claims it's ~47 (only natural causes). I'm too lazy to verify it of course...
So, one example. If you translate the following book into English using some online service, ages of the skeletons excavated near the Prague Castle are being discussed on pages 41 and 42
https://www.arup.cas.cz/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/CP_12_2_2...
Of 95 adult people buried there, three men were in the category senilis (over 60). Women could obviously live longer, as 16 of them were in the category senilis (quite a lot! 29 per cent of all adult women in fact), but there was also a visible cluster of female dead aged 20-30, which probably indicates the danger of dying at childbirth or soon after.
The people buried at Lumbe's Gardens were probably members of the "better off" part of the society. It is located right next to the seat of the Bohemian King (then, Prince), after all. So this is how age profiles looked like in the "upper middle strata" of the medieval Czech society around year 1000 or so. Still pretty bad, by current standards. Quite a lot of deaths in the < 35 age bracket.
==================================================
Incidentally, I just read an article about famous Czech personalities of the 19th century. Many were rather short-lived as well:
https://www.idnes.cz/xman/styl/narodni-obrozeni-historie-ces...
Karel Hynek Mácha, the national Romantic poet, died in 1836 at 26 years of age, either pneumonia or cholera
František Ladislav Čelakovský, translator, died in 1852 at 53 years of age.
Václav Matěj Kramerius, publisher, died in 1808 at 55 years of age.
Jindřich Fügner, sportsman, died in 1865 at 43 years of age, blood poisoning.
Miroslav Tyrš, his friend, died in 1884 at 52 years of age, drowning, possibly suicide.
Josef Mánes, painter, died in 1871 at 51 years of age, syphilis.
Bedřich Smetana, composer, died in 1884 at 60 years of age, syphilis.
Božena Němcová, writer, died in 1862 at 41 years of age, tuberculosis.
Karel Havlíček Borovský, journalist, died in 1856 at 34 years of age, tuberculosis.
Josef Kajetán Tyl, director and theatrist, died in 1856 at 48 years of age, probably tuberculosis.
These are about the most famous Czech cultural icons of the 19th century and most of them didn't even see their 60th birthday. Smetana did (barely), but he was broken by so many diseases that he might not have been aware of it anymore.
https://www.arup.cas.cz/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/CP_12_2_2...
Of 95 adult people buried there, three men were in the category senilis (over 60). Women could obviously live longer, as 16 of them were in the category senilis (quite a lot! 29 per cent of all adult women in fact), but there was also a visible cluster of female dead aged 20-30, which probably indicates the danger of dying at childbirth or soon after.
The people buried at Lumbe's Gardens were probably members of the "better off" part of the society. It is located right next to the seat of the Bohemian King (then, Prince), after all. So this is how age profiles looked like in the "upper middle strata" of the medieval Czech society around year 1000 or so. Still pretty bad, by current standards. Quite a lot of deaths in the < 35 age bracket.
==================================================
Incidentally, I just read an article about famous Czech personalities of the 19th century. Many were rather short-lived as well:
https://www.idnes.cz/xman/styl/narodni-obrozeni-historie-ces...
Karel Hynek Mácha, the national Romantic poet, died in 1836 at 26 years of age, either pneumonia or cholera
František Ladislav Čelakovský, translator, died in 1852 at 53 years of age.
Václav Matěj Kramerius, publisher, died in 1808 at 55 years of age.
Jindřich Fügner, sportsman, died in 1865 at 43 years of age, blood poisoning.
Miroslav Tyrš, his friend, died in 1884 at 52 years of age, drowning, possibly suicide.
Josef Mánes, painter, died in 1871 at 51 years of age, syphilis.
Bedřich Smetana, composer, died in 1884 at 60 years of age, syphilis.
Božena Němcová, writer, died in 1862 at 41 years of age, tuberculosis.
Karel Havlíček Borovský, journalist, died in 1856 at 34 years of age, tuberculosis.
Josef Kajetán Tyl, director and theatrist, died in 1856 at 48 years of age, probably tuberculosis.
These are about the most famous Czech cultural icons of the 19th century and most of them didn't even see their 60th birthday. Smetana did (barely), but he was broken by so many diseases that he might not have been aware of it anymore.
> life expectancy was just a few years below of where we are today. There
I don't think that's really true. e.g. IIRC back in ~1900 mortality rates even for people in their 20s and 30s were more than twice as high as now.
Life expectancy at 20 currently in the US is ~60 years, back in 1850s it was about ~40 and mid 30s in the 1700s. But we must consider that that US/Thirteen Colonies were an exceptionally nice place to live compared to pretty much anywhere else back in those days.
England was a few years lower but e.g.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde...
Look at Figures 4 and 5. A relatively huge proportion of the population died in the 30s - 50s. Very few people die that young these days. Back in the 1850 70% of reached age 20 and 50% reached 50. NOw it's >99% and 96% respective..
Young people died all the time from various rampant communicable diseases many which are treatable these days. Just consider the cultural significance Tuberculosis had back in the 1800s..
I don't think that's really true. e.g. IIRC back in ~1900 mortality rates even for people in their 20s and 30s were more than twice as high as now.
Life expectancy at 20 currently in the US is ~60 years, back in 1850s it was about ~40 and mid 30s in the 1700s. But we must consider that that US/Thirteen Colonies were an exceptionally nice place to live compared to pretty much anywhere else back in those days.
England was a few years lower but e.g.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde...
Look at Figures 4 and 5. A relatively huge proportion of the population died in the 30s - 50s. Very few people die that young these days. Back in the 1850 70% of reached age 20 and 50% reached 50. NOw it's >99% and 96% respective..
Young people died all the time from various rampant communicable diseases many which are treatable these days. Just consider the cultural significance Tuberculosis had back in the 1800s..
Otzi was carrying birch polypore, which is used in traditional medicine. The surface "skin" can be used as a basic sticking plaster and it is chemically poisonous to whipworm. Based on this article though I wonder if it was being used for antibacterial properties.
Radiolab did a fun podcast piece on this a while back. Great background listen: https://radiolab.org/podcast/ice-cold-case
There's also a movie about it, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceman_(2017_film)