![]() “Cosmetic tattoos-like those of the Chinchorro mummy-and therapeutic tattoos-like those of the Iceman-have been around for a very long time. “Apart from the historical implications of our paper, we shouldn’t forget the cultural roles tattoos have played over millennia,” Krutak says. This finding settled the controversy: Ötzi is older than the Chinchorro mummy by at least 500 years.Īlthough Ötzi is the oldest tattooed human, the paper’s authors conclude this will likely change: Ötzi’s tattoos are indicative of social and/or therapeutic practices that predate him, and future archaeological finds and new techniques should someday lead to even older evidence of tattooed mummies. (Photograph © South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology/EURAC/Samadelli/Staschitz) Tattoos on the body of Ötzi, the Tyrolean Iceman. This error was repeated in subsequent studies, pushing the Chinchorro mummy’s age back about 4,000 years earlier than his actual radiocarbon date. (Before Present, a time scale used in radiocarbon dating.) However, the paper’s authors surmise there was an error, and the radiocarbon date was recorded as 3830 ± 100 B.C. ![]() When a sample of his lung tissue was radiocarbon dated in the 1980s, the date was given as 3830 ± 100 B.P. Lost in Transcriptionĭuring their work, the researchers found an apparent misreading of the Chinchorro mummy’s radiocarbon dating. In contrast, little was known about the Chinchorro mummy, so the researchers set out to determine his identity and age and examine his tattoos. His clothes and tools have been extensively radiocarbon dated, and much is known about his health, environment, death and his tattoos-which may be therapeutic they are grouped in places where Ötzi suffered from joint and spinal degeneration. Ötzi has been studied for more than two decades. (This technique measures the amount of carbon-14 in a dead organism, compares it to the carbon-14 levels in the atmosphere today and gives an estimate of when the organism died.) ![]() ![]() (Image courtesy Lars Krutak)Īrchaeologists use radiocarbon dating to date samples, and it was the key to determining if Ötzi or the Chinchorro mummy had the oldest tattoos. This illustration shows the location of tattoos on the face of the Chinchorro mummy. Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives, African Art. ![]()
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