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Ötzi the Iceman ’s many tattoos were made by " hand - poking " — a manual version of the tattooing technique usually used today — and not by abridge his skin as some researchers have suggested , harmonize to a new study .
Ötzidied in Europe ’s Alps about 5,300 years ago , and his body remained mummified there for thousands of years until tourists discovered it in 1991 on a mountain pass near the border of Italy and Austria . bailiwick have since revealed many scene of his life , include thetools and weaponshe carried , hisclothesand hislast repast .
This shows co-author Danny Riday tattooing his own leg using an awl made from the bone of a white-tailed deer. Comparisons indicate that this was the technique used for all of Otzi’s 61 tattoos.
There have also beenstudies of Ötzi ’s 61 tattoos ; but while it ’s often reported they were made by cut the hide and rub soot into the prick , that does n’t seem to have been the case , harmonize to read first authorAaron Deter - Wolf , an expert on ancient tattooing who works for the state of Tennessee ’s Department of Environment and Conservation .
or else , " within fair doubt they are hand - poke , rather than being incise or being done in any other style , " Deter - Wolf told Live Science .
Hand - poking involves pierce the cutis with an awl or needle and has some similarities to modern tattooing machines , according to the field of study , release on March 13 in theEuropean Journal of Archaeology .
Danny Riday’s leg being tattooed by another tattoo artist using boar tusk comb; this is the technique traditionally used in Austronesia.
Related : Ötzi the Iceman may have been bald and getting fat before his slaying 5,300 years ago
Experimental tattooing
In the new subject field , the investigator compare Ötzi ’s tattoos to modern tattoos made on human pelt , which were created and detail as part ofa 2022 studyinvestigating pre - modern tattooing technique .
Those included tattoos made by paw - poking , by slit , by tapping points with a beetle — traditionally used throughout the Pacific region — and by subdermal tattooing , which can use a pigment thread to " stitch " the skin and was commonly performed by Inuit people .
The innovative tattoos were made on the pegleg of Danny Riday , a professional tattoo artist in New Zealand and a carbon monoxide gas - source of both the 2022 field of study and the latest study .
A reconstruction of Ötzi the Iceman shows what he may have looked like, although a recent study suggests he had darker skin.(Image credit: Pascopix / Alamy Stock Photo)
The comparison indicated that none of Ötzi ’s tattoos were formed from incisions , which create narrow lines at the ends where the healing skin pulls the cut closed , Deter - Wolf said . But Ötzi ’s tattoo matched the " hand - poked " tattoos , in which a pigment — black soot , in Ötzi ’s pillow slip — is keep within the tiny piercings in the skin .
Deter - Wolf said the physique of hand - poked tattoo lines reckon on the pattern of the lead used , and Ötzi ’s tattoo seem to have been made by an awl — a tool for pierce jam in leather , typically a trivial gravid than the holes made by a phonograph needle .
It may be that tattoo awl have been misclassified as even prick at other archaeological internet site , he enounce .
Careful analysis of Ötzi’s remains show that he had at least 61 tattoos around his body. Not all of them were evident at first.(Image credit: Aaron Deter-Wolf et al. 2024)
Tattooing for medicine
Ötzi ’s tattoos have no obvious symbolization , unlike some ancientPeruvian and Scythian tattoos ; andearlier studiessuggested that many of Ötzi ’s tattoos may have been curative — that is , mean as medical treatments .
But many of Ötzi ’s tattoo depict stacked parallel lines and plus - signal - like marks , and Deter - Wolf said that any — or none — of them may have had some unknown symbolisation . He observe that most of Ötzi ’s tattoo would have been covered by his article of clothing , but a tattoo like a bracelet on his left-hand wrist would have been seeable .
Scientific conservatorMarco Samadelli , who study Ötzi ’s remains at Italy ’s Institute for Mummy Studies in Bolzano , near where they were find , said that the new study was of a " eminent scientific standard . "
Some archaeologists think many of Ötzi’s tattoos were “therapeutic” and may have been intended as treatments for various ailments.(Image credit: Some archaeologists think many of Ötzi’s tattoos were “therapeutic” and may have been intended as cures for various ailments.)
He tell apart Live Science in an email that " the authors do not claim with out-and-out certainty the puncture tattoo proficiency with a single - pointed instrument , but give all-embracing and plausible explanation . "
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The researchers compared Ötzi’s tattoos to modern tattoos made with different techniques on the leg of co-author Danny Riday. These two photographs show the day they were made (left) and after six months of healing.(Image credit: Danny Riday)
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Samadelli was n’t take in the latest work but has ledrigorous research into Ötzi ’s tattoo . He favours the approximation that many or most of Ötzi ’s tattoos were made for remedial determination .
" The fact that not all the tattoos are placed at [ the locations of ] wounds or disease does not mean that they must therefore have a emblematical meaning , but that their correlation coefficient has probably not yet been identified , " he said .
A comparison of the modern tattoos (A to F) and Ötzi’s tattoos (G) indicated that the Iceman’s were made with the “hand-poking” tattooing technique.(Image credit: Aaron Deter-Wolf et al. 2022/ South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology)
The researchers suggests that Ötzi’s tattoos were made by “hand poking” with a bone awl, similar to this one found near Ötzi’s body that he probably used to repair his equipment.(Image credit: Aaron Deter-Wolf et al. 2024)
This shows Riday tattooing his own leg using a needle made from a gannet (bird) bone to pull a thread infused with pigment beneath the skin. This technique was commonly used by the Inuit and people in the far south of South America.
This shows Riday tattooing his own leg using a flake of obsidian to make it cut or incision before rubbing pigment into it. This is how some earlier studies had suggested Otzi’s tattoo were made, but the latest study indicates this does not seem to be the case.
