The Iceman had a whipworm infection, researchers discovered in 2001. Other tattoos were found to be located on or near acupuncture meridians that may have had the purpose of relieving other ailments, like gastro-intestinal problems,” writes Krutak in his latest book, Spiritual Skin: Magical Tattoos and Scarification, published this fall. “Incredibly, approximately 80 percent of these tattoos overlap with classical Chinese acupuncture points utilized to treat rheumatism, a medical condition that plagued the Iceman. The preserved body has a total of 57 tattoos-short lines etched in groups on his lower back and ankles, a cross behind his right knee and two rings around his left wrist. Krutak, sitting at his desk in the bowels of the National Museum of Natural History, is referring to Ötzi, the 5,300-year-old mummified “Iceman,” so named by researchers because he was discovered in the Ötztal Alps on the Italy-Austria border in September 1991.
“But, the second oldest we have is medicinal,” he adds. Tattooed on the upper lip of a 7,000-year-old mummy from the Chinchorro culture of northern Chile and southern Peru is a thin pencil mustache. “The earliest evidence we have of tattoos, not surprisingly, is cosmetic,” says Lars Krutak.
