Well, get this: you can get up close and personal with Oetzi over the internet. And I'm not talking about a dating website, that would be weird. The Iceman Photoscan is a website launched in 2009 which allows you to see high definition images of Oetzi - it is possible to zoom in to see details down to 1mm small on his body. If that wasn't good enough, you can also view him in UV, pinpoint his tattoos and zoom into them (preserved beautifully), and you can even see him in 3D if you own a pair of old style red-and-cyan glasses.
Here is the website: http://iceman.eurac.edu/
I have not been this excited about the internet being able to transmit such a high level of photographic detail since I found out about Google Art Project, which I subsequently used in a talk about science and art when I was at school. Something about being able to see an object in such detail without actually being there amazes me, and that you can access this kind of information resource for free is brilliant. Even better, it allows the viewer to see Oetzi without interfering with the very sensitive conditions that preserve his body.
Some may question the right to use photos of Oetzi like this, but so long as people remember to respect Oetzi he lends a huge hand in developing educational resources, and scientific methods too, whilst of course finding out more about himself.
If you want to find out more about Oetzi beyond the pictures, you can watch videos about his wax model reconstruction and interviews with the people who have been studying him here: http://www.youtube.com/user/OetziTheIceman?feature=relchannel (he's got his own channel on Youtube!)
Oetzi isn't the only mummy with tattoos, though. The 'Siberian Ice Maiden' made the news last month as she went back to the Altai Republic where she was found on the Ukok Plateau 2500m in the mountains in 1993 by Natalia Polosmak. The body has been dated to around 2500 years old and she is thought to have died aged 25. Preserved by the permafrost, they found her in a burial chamber dressed in Chinese silk and wearing a horsehair wig, alongside jewellery, a mirror, and six saddled horses amongst other things. But her tattoos are the things have have preserved the best. Thought to belong to the nomadic Pazyryk people, their tattoos are according to Dr Polosmak 'most complicated, and the most beautiful' among mummies in the archaeological record. Here's a drawing of a mummified soldier's tattoos from the same plateau:
Drawings by Elena Shumakova, Institute of Archeology and Ethnography,
Siberian Branch of Russian Academy of Science
To quote from this wonderful little online booklet about the findings (http://www.scribd.com/doc/96350466/Tombs-of-Altai-Mountains), in Altai art there appears to be 4 main motifs; "the horned horse, the flying“beaked” deer, the crested griffin and the elk with lobed antlers." (p36)
The cool thing is that all of these images are rooted in "common steppe tradition", a purely local Altai art that only incorporated other cultural influences during the 5th and 4th centuries AD, when the nomads would have exchanged objects, and ideas, with the Chinese and Greek. But don't think it was a one-way transfer; some of the main motifs that came out of north Western China was inspired by the Altai, seen in the reversed back legs of this elk from a belt plaque which carried into China but is also seen in some of the Altai tattoos.
©Mission Archéologique Françaiseen Asie Centrale (CNRS-MAE) H.-P.Francfort.
If we compare this spread of iconic motifs to the present day, has much really changed? As populations migrated, so did their ideas. In the same sense, tattoos help to spread these ideas, as well as represent part of the person's identity with its meaning and its connotations. Think about the internet today; this is like a virtual net of migrations, when ideas can spread at the touch of a button. You go on Google images, and one will pop up from the other side of the world. So before anyone says that some modern tattoos (say, a little Hello Kitty or something) are pointless or meaningless, maybe these are the iconic motifs of the present day - well, in the world of the internet anyway. As such, why should I have been surprised that Brad Pitt had a tattoo of Oetzi on his arm? Oetzi, all over the internet, books and journals, has become an icon. And tattoo useage still has its roots in its most basic functions; self-beautification, identity and beliefs. It appears none of these factors for having one have changed over time - only the images themselves.
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