in 1991, a five thousand year old tattooed man ‘ötzi the ice man’
made the headlines of newspapers all over the world when
his frozen body was discovered on a mountain between
austria and italy.
this is the best preserved corpse of that period ever found.
the skin bears 57 tattoos: a cross on the inside of the left knee,
six straight lines 15 centimeters long above the kidneys and
numerous parallel lines on the ankles.
the position of the tattoo marks suggests that they were probably
applied for therapeutic reasons (treatment of arthritis).
