The 3300 BC Archer
In 1991, a preserved human body was found 3.2km on the slopes up the Alps north of Italy.
Radiocarbon dating pegged the age at 3300B.C., well before the first Pharaoh of Egypt ascended his throne. Nicknamed the “Iceman,” he was an archer, aged 25yo, 1.6m tall, possibly shrunk due to desication. Wheat bread remnants in his colon indicated he had access to crops besides hunting game for food. He was well wrapped in fur, with fur shoes lined with straw to insulate his feet. Apparently he worked on metal, as he had arsenic and other material used in smelting copper in his hair.
Archeologists had a hard time interpreting the equipment he carried, purportedly on a hunting trip up the snow-covered slopes. His yew bow was 72″ long,with quiver made of birch bark containing 14 arrows – 12 without broadheads, and two with flint heads; one arrow was broken. Feather fragments were still attached, with bone nocks tied onto the shafts like the broadheads. He had a flint knife and a copper axe with a yew handle 2 feet long.
The archeologists could not understand why he went hunting with incomplete arrows. This is easily explained. Each time he shot his enemy or missed with his arrows stuck under the snow he retrieved them, thus explaining why he had 12 arrows without their flint heads. He had lost his broadheads in the ground!
He had serious cuts in his hand and wrist, sustained in combat as he had blood DNA of 4 different adversaries on his clothings. He took an arrow shot into his shoulder while escaping and yanked it out leaving the broadhead stuck in his bones. Surprisingly the wound was sutured! Another wound was fresh, inflicted before he died, and had no time to heal.
CT scans showed he was shot from a low angle from downslope, arrow entering his back and stopped at the front, at his clavicle, cutting the artery and causing internal haemorrhage.
He eventually succumbed to blood loss and the cold, dying as he sheltered in a gully, on his descent downslope.
It is interesting to note that he had arthritis in his neck, shoulder, lumbar and right hip joints. And there were black/bluish marks showing signs that a form of acupuncture was used on him. Nine of the 15 spots were dead-on corresponding to today’s Traditional Chinese Medicine’s acupuncture points.
