Permafrost corpse

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Replica of Ötzi
Childlike glacier mummy from Qilakitsoq, Greenland

A permafrost corpse (also known as a glacier mummy or ice mummy ) is a partially or fully mummified corpse that has been permanently under frost conditions from death until it was found. It occurs when a dead body is , as it were, "frozen" in a very cold place, in other words in a glaciated or permafrost area. In addition to animals, people died and occasionally still die under such conditions today. Nowadays these are mostly alpine tourists who are buried under avalanches and found after a few years. The internationally best-known glacier mummy comes from the Copper Age: the man from Tisenjoch , also known as Ötzi , found in 1991 .

Emergence

If corpses preserved under permafrost conditions are found after some time and then stored under normal conditions, the usual processes of decomposition of corpses quickly set in . If, on the other hand, the corpse remains undiscovered for several years, the natural freeze-drying process starts a mummification process that can preserve the corpse for longer periods of time. The water contained in the corpse slowly passes into the ambient air via sublimation or, if there is no air, it gradually forms an ice lens around the frozen corpse without any putrefaction or decay processes taking place. This is promoted by low air pressure and dry ambient air, as is typical for alpine areas . Exposed parts of the body such as the tip of the nose, ears or fingers can become partially mummified after just a few months. In order for a glacier mummy to emerge, the corpse must be protected from scavenging animals as well as from mechanical destruction through movements of the ground or glaciers and also from other decomposition processes . Most of the old frost corpses were probably formed when the corpses were completely surrounded by ice and thus protected from external influences.

Outwardly, glacier mummies are similar to mummies that were created through heat drying, but the internal organs can be better preserved than these. Bones and cartilage, hair and nails are generally well preserved. The skin of the glacier mummies, stretched over the bones, is leathery, rough and brown or blackish. The muscles are dried up.

Permafrost corpses of humans

Today, many forensic medical institutes have human glacier mummies that have been kept at room temperature for decades. They may have lasted several thousand years before they were found and are then objects of glacier archeology . The man from Tisenjoch , better known under the name of Ötzi , whose mummy was found in the Ötztal Alps in 1991, lived in the second half of the fourth millennium BC. Researchers also discovered glacier mummies in arctic areas. A female body from around the year 400 was found on St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea in 1970. Tombs from the 7th and 3rd centuries BC are known from Siberia , in which well-preserved corpses with intact soft tissues were located. In Qilakitsoq in Greenland, two medieval tombs from around 1475 were discovered that contained six women and two children. These were well preserved to reveal filigree tattoos on the face. Other permafrost corpses from West Greenland are known, but of more recent date. Some corpses from today's British Columbia in Canada and the Andes come from the same period . In the Andes, for example, several children's bodies were discovered in 1999 on the 6700 meter high Llullaillaco . In Barrow, Alaska, on the other hand, two glacier mummies and three human skeletons were discovered who were believed to have been crushed to death by sea ice around 1500.

In the summer of 2006, the ice mummy of a Scythian cavalier was recovered from a burial chamber in the permafrost of the Altai Mountains in the South Siberian Republic of Tuwa by Hermann Parzinger and employees of the German Archaeological Institute . Their age was estimated to be 2500 years. The mummy wore a splendid fur coat and an ornate and gilded headdress. A composite arch is also preserved.

Permafrost corpses of animals

The woolly mammoth calf Dima at the site in the northeast Siberian Kolyma basin in what was once Beringia . The excellently preserved ice mummy of the approx. 115 cm long male was found by a worker in 1977 while mining for gold. Dima died around 39,000 years ago, aged 6 to 8 months.

Cold mummification doesn't just affect people. Mummified mammoths found in Siberia are relatively numerous . Most of these mammoths probably died by breaking into the ice and then mummifying in the absence of air. Today it brings erosion or the search for mineral resources back to the surface of the earth. About 50 specimens are known to science, and it can be assumed that numerous other mammoths were found, but only their ivory was used.

In the Siberian permafrost , the remains of these large Pleistocene mammals, which belonged to the megafauna of the mammoth steppe , have been preserved so well up to our days that their internal organs , muscles and even blood can still be eaten by foxes , wolves and dogs . Such finds are of particular value if cell structures have been preserved on which cytological and histological examinations provide information about the differences between the cells of these animals and today's animals and thus allow statements about the physiology of the extinct animal species. Also, genetic material can be obtained. Recently, therefore, considerations have been made as to whether it would be possible to bring extinct animal species back to life with genetic engineering methods ( cloning ), but due to the breakdown of DNA after the death of a living being, such efforts have not yet been successful. In 1977 it was possible for the first time to isolate a protein from the muscle tissue of a woolly mammoth ( Mammuthus primigenius ) found in Fairbanks ( Alaska ) , which allowed an exact relationship to recent elephants to be determined. It turned out that the protein found in the mammoth (an immunoglobulin ) to its counterpart in the Indian and African elephants was roughly related to each other as the globulins of these two elephant species. The molecular biological proof of the close relationship of these animals was provided. Further examples are the approximately 39,000 year old body of the woolly mammoth calf Dima from northeast Siberia or the approximately 35,000 year old carcass of the steppe bison Blue Babe .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d C. Hennsge and B. Medea: Corpse phenomena and time of death determinations in: Bernd Brinkmann, Burkhard Madea (ed.): Handbook for judicial medicine Volume 1 Springer DE, 2003 ISBN 3540002596 pp. 164–165.
  2. ↑ a b c J.P. Hart Hansen: The Mummies from Qilakitsoq - Paleopathological Aspects in: JP Hart Hansen and HC Gulløv (eds.): The Mummies from Qilakitsoq - Eskimos in the 15th Century Museum Tusculanum Press ISBN 8763511932 p. 64.
  3. ↑ Andrew Chamberlain: Human Remains University of California Press, 1994 ISBN 0520088344 pp. 43-44.
  4. ↑ a b Terry Brown, Keri Brown: Biomolecular Archeology: An Introduction John Wiley & Sons, 2011 ISBN 1444392425 p. 102.
  5. ↑ Ice mummy found during the shooting of the ZDF series "Schliemanns Erben"
  6. ↑ ZDF Expedition: The Secret of the Ice Mummy ( Memento of the original from January 13, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.zdf.de
  7. ↑ The warrior from the Mongolian ice grave ( Memento of the original from January 11, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.eurasischesmagazin.de
  8. ↑ Video Mongolia: The Return of the Ice Mummy (ZDF production 'Schliemanns Erben Spezial, November 16, 2009, 2:40 am, 43:42 min.)  In the ZDFmediathek , accessed on February 6, 2014 ..