Otzi Mummies

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When people talk about mummies, what comes to mind? Egyptian rulers? Pyramids? Sand everywhere? How about the mummies found in South America, preserved in Volcanos, intended to be sacrificed? What about the mountains, snow, and ice? The Tyrolean Iceman , also known as Otzi, was found in the Austrian mountains in 1991 . Since the discovery, Otzi has been one of the most highly studied Ancient mummies, revealing a myriad of information about Ancient life, as well as challenging some previous notions about history. Many of these studies involved the use of microbiology, and have brought to light many things previously unknown about our ancestors. Today, we will look at the dive into Otzi’s microbiology, looking at diseases he carried, exploring …show more content…

Finding the evidence of the stomach bug was difficult, because the Iceman’s stomach lining has deteriorated over the years. Scientists have often use the gut microbe to track human populations, using the distinct phylogeographic features to study population movement. The bacterium is separated into Ancestral strains to track the movement of humans, the heavily agreed upon strains include ancestral EastAsia, ancestral Europe1 (AE1), ancestral Europe2 (AE2), ancestral Africa1, and ancestral Africa2. Through extensive combing of data, researchers concluded that the European H. pylori was a combination of the ancient Asian and African strains. Even with this conclusion, researchers disagreed on when the hybridization of the strains occurred, though many thought it to be over 10,000 years ago. Otzi reveals a different story. Found in the Alps between Italy and Austria, scientists believed the Iceman would carry the European hybridized strain of the Helicobacter bacterium. However, Zink and the others were surprised when the strain looked nothing like the European ancient strains in the least. Further analysis revealed Otzi’s strain to be more similar to the Asian ancestral strain. The evidence suggested that the Helicobacter strains did not hybridize until much later in history! Though one mummy does not a trend make, and many researchers are on the hunt for more mummies willing to give up their H. pylori strains for

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