Thanks Tennessee Nana. It's weird that the Iceman didn't come from Cuba. /rimshot
Posted on 11/07/2020 5:29:26 AM PST by LibWhacker
Lady of Bietikow lived during the Neolithic period. All that is left of the woman who died more than 5,000 years ago are bones and some clothing fragments, but researchers have still managed to piece together some details about her life.
By learning more about the life of Lady of Bietikow, as she has been named, we gain information about what life was like in those days.
Her remains were found near a village of the same name in northeastern Germany's Uckermark region during excavation works for wind turbines.
Who Was The The Mysterious Lady Of Bietikow And What Had She In Common With Ötzi Iceman?
According to local media, the skeleton had been buried in a settlement in a squatting position, one of the oldest known forms of burial.
German researchers who investigated her remains say she was between 30 and 45 years old and died more than 5,000 years ago.
It is an interesting observation because it means she lived during the same period as Öetzi the Iceman, the stunningly preserved corpse found by tourists in the Alps in the 1990s. We know from previous studies that over 5300 years ago, Ötzi was crossing Tisenjoch/Giogo di Tisa in the Schnalstal/Val Senales Valley, South Tyrol, where he was murdered and preserved naturally in the ice.
He is, therefore, older than the famous Egyptian pyramids and Stonehenge. Ötzi lived during the Copper Age, a period of the late Neolithic. He was still using stone tools but owned an innovative and precious copper axe. The final journey of Ötzi Iceman has been studied in detail, but the fate of Bietikow is still unknown.
Yet, finding similarities between these two individuals is challenging but not impossible.
"You can compare Oetzi and the Lady of Bietikow in terms of age," said Philipp Roskoschinski, one of the two archaeologists who made the discovery in the state of Brandenburg, which surrounds Berlin.
His body was extremely well preserved, with organs, skin, and other organic material still intact—researchers were even able to see what he had eaten hours before he died.
"The discovery of Oetzi was much more spectacular due to the conditions of preservation," Roskoschinski said.
The case is different with Lady of Bietikow. With so few of her remains, it’s not easy to learn more about her. What we know so far is that she was not a healthy person.
She lived during a time humans first introduced grains into their diet. This was done because they could be stored more quickly than meat and could also be used as a means of payment, according to anthropologist Bettina Jungklaus.
However, this led to a deterioration in people's general health.
This can be seen in the state of the Lady of Bietikow's teeth, which are severely eroded and missing completely in some places, Jungklaus said.
"Normally, there is enamel on the surface of the teeth. But here it is heavily worn, chewed off," she said.
"This allows us to draw conclusions about her diet: it was probably very rich in fibre, very hard. There are certain grains that cause the teeth to wear out easily."
It remains unclear whether the condition of Lady Bietikow's teeth indicates an illness or even the cause of her death.
Researchers will keep investing the 5,000year-old skeleton of Lady of Bietikow and hopefully, more facts about her life will emerge soon.
PING
However, this led to a deterioration in people's general health."
That reminds me, I need to get some more bacon.
It’s more than that. Farmers didn’t have the tough life of a hunter-gatherer.
They were softies.
Sounds Slavic.
Something she has in common with Richard "The Iceman" Kuklinski.
The population rose when people settled down to farm. It meant more disease and grinding labor, so farmers didn’t have life easier than hunter-gatherers. When there were fewer people around, there was less competition for berries and game.
Pretty sure Oetzi was a fugitive who tried to run, but the posse headed him off at the pass.
Humans were bigger and stronger when they were limited to hunting and gathering. The shrinking man, that is evident in the archeological record as we moved away from hunting and gathering is evidence of that.
I’m not saying that the move to farming was a bad thing, but it did cause problems by doing so.
That's why I had to give up Captain Crunch.
5,000 years is just a blink in evolutionary history. Throughout the vast majority of human existence, mankind evolved with a strong propensity to find its nuitrition and survival by eating animals of all sorts.The fact that humans were able to understand that the marrow of bones left behind by predators was good food, was essential for early food storage and survival. Humans also retained the capacity to digest fruits, edible roots and some whole plants. Yet the human population could never really grow or achieve its intelectual and cultural potential as long as humans were half starved, wandering hunter gatherers. It was not until they learned to cultivate grains, a nuitrition source that while they were able to digest but not what they were genetically equiped to use as a primary source, did the storage of adequate food stuffs become possible. People did not have to hunt/gather as a primary occupation. The population expanded greatly and civilization and culture evolved.Yet as the murder of Otzi shows and as is plainly discerned from current times, humans have always had the capacity to destroy themselves and the civilizations they have built. How else do you explain Biden and his cohorts?
Where is the perfunctory picture of Helen Thomas?
Someone please help me out.
That’s an interesting idea. It’s also possible that Ötzi was fighting with allies who did not die with him or whose bodies were not preserved, i.e. that he died in a form of warfare.
Of course that's true. And if Homo sapiens has existed in his present for for 200,000 years, as the evidence suggests, what were people doing for 195,000 years before history dawned?
I doubt that they were bumping around in the woods.
I think the suggestions of lost civilisations is worth considering. The earth would likely have erased traces of them if they occurred in the distant past. The only thing I find unexplainable is the absence of evidence of metals.
Probably messing with the wrong guys wife or daughter.
Yes.
Some additional bites from a book review in last weeks WSJ.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/amber-waves-review-cereal-drama-11604266382
Ms. Zabinski introduces us to wheat in its earliest, wildest iteration, describing a seed that was at first nearly inedible for humans. Herbivores gobbled it up with impunity, fermenting grass and seeds alike in their multichambered, specialized stomachs. But wheat’s protective hull was so incredibly hard that our hunter-gatherer ancestors cracked their molars simply trying to chew on it. Eventually stones were used to grind the seeds into flour, providing primitive pastes and gruels when other resources were scarce. This required an inordinate amount of time, energy and organization.
...How did this wild seed metamorphose from a tooth-busting, energy-intensive liability into the miraculously adaptable asset we have today? As Ms. Zabinski explains, while most animals are unable to procreate with different species, “plants in general and grasses in particular are rule benders.” Thus, when an ancient variety of wheat known as einkorn met the weedy goatgrass in some metaphorical moonlit meadow, merging their genes, the implications of this unexpected coupling were profound.
The resulting offspring was emmer. Its seeds were softer and less difficult to clean; its versatility allowed our ancestors to bake the very first bread. More important, it spurred the advent of farming, for instance in theMesopotamian village of Abu Hureyra in modern Syria...
JOE BIDEN”S VERY FIRST WIFE?????
Interesting. Big question is when did man begin to crudely cultivate. They probably realized very early that the pits from fruits or seeds from berries if placed in the ground sometimes resulted in new fruit bearing trees or berry plants. They probably could not stay to monitor or protect the cultivation due to the need to keep moving for hunting and gathering. However through trial, error and observation cultivation skills were acquired and they inevitably became knowledgeable about plant varieties, characteristics, grow times and nutritional values. However once they got the hang of productive cultivation, food became more abundant, populations grew rapidly, permanent settlements and civilization became possible. Of course the vast majority of people were eating diets that they were not optimal for their genetic blueprint. This incongruity will forever affect humankind.
Thanks Tennessee Nana. It's weird that the Iceman didn't come from Cuba. /rimshot
The first iterations of agriculture came with food forests. Europeans discovered that the American Indians of both north and south america managed their forests.
North American indians burned the understories of forests to promote grass that provided food for herbivores.
South American indians of the amazon promoted whole forests dedicated to all kinds of fruits.
Examples of these old world food forests remain morrocco.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKIgqa49rMc
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