Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Meeting the Ice Man




We finally met Otzi the Ice Man. He had waited about 4,500 years to be found , so I am sure that he didn’t mind the extra day’s wait to meet us! All the museums were closed yesterday.
In 1991, this Bronze Age man was found frozen in a glacier in the South Tyrol. After being taken to Austria, he has finally found his home in the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano. This museum focuses on him but includes a number of “bog men”, South American petrified corpses and even Egyptian mummies.
He lies still frozen and his clothes, weapons and possessions are displayed separately. He was found in skin clothing, shoes etc and carried arrows and simple tools.
At 46, he was considered to be a very old man. It was an honour meeting with Otzi.
We left our main bag behind in Bolzano and departed for a few days hiking in the Dolomites. As we sit in our hotel in Castelrotto and look out over the Dolomites, this little town looks like part of Austria….. but located in Italy. The language, houses, food and clothing tell us it is Austria but it is Italy.

4 comments:

Amanda said...

Yep. That was just as wierd as I suspected. What dead body are you looking at next!

Miss Di said...

Hmmm the top photo nearly put me off my lunch, but it's so interesting when they find bog men/glaicer men!

Dave said...

he does look little spoilt- better stick him back until bin night

gailandrob said...

if you had seen us after we finished our hike, the next dead body could have been ours!