Ötzi the Lyme Mummy (2019)
24 comments
·January 29, 2025pjdesno
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?
bitcurious
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...
HelloUsername
There's also a movie about it, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceman_(2017_film)
giik
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!
mrzool
nice to see my hometown mentioned on hn :)
Archelaos
> 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.
hoofedear
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
Archelaos
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.
hoofedear
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
null
davideg
The dedicated website is also more informative (though pretty high level): https://www.iceman.it/en/the-mummy/
miramba
_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.
qwytw
> 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..
inglor_cz
" 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.
miramba
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.
n4r9
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.
tomerdmann
Radiolab did a fun podcast piece on this a while back. Great background listen: https://radiolab.org/podcast/ice-cold-case
readthenotes1
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?
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".