Il Primo Amico dell'Uomo

Our bond with dogs 

may go back more than 27,000 years 

Dogs' special relationship to humans may go back 27,000 to 40,000 years, according to genomic analysis of an ancient Taimyr wolf bone reported in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on May 21. 
Earlier genome-based estimates have suggested that the ancestors of modern-day dogs diverged from wolves no more than 16,000 years ago, after the last Ice Age. 

Ancient Taimyr Wolf bone from the lower jaw. The animal lived approximately  27,000 to 40,000 years ago

 [Credit: Love Dalén] 

The genome from this ancient specimen, which has been radiocarbon dated to 35,000 years ago, reveals that the Taimyr wolf represents the most recent common ancestor of modern wolves and dogs. 
"Dogs may have been domesticated much earlier than is generally believed," says Love Dalén of the Swedish Museum of Natural History. 
"The only other explanation is that there was a major divergence between two wolf populations at that time, and one of these populations subsequently gave rise to all modern wolves." 
Dalén considers this second explanation less likely, since it would require that the second wolf population subsequently became extinct in the wild. 
"It is [still] possible that a population of wolves remained relatively untamed but tracked human groups to a large degree, for a long time," adds first author of the study Pontus Skoglund of Harvard Medical School and the Broad Institute. 

DNA from this small piece of a rib bone from an ancient Taimyr wolf suggests that  dogs may have been domesticated 27,000 years ago 

[Credit: Love Dalén] 

The researchers made these discoveries based on a small piece of bone picked up during an expedition to the Taimyr Peninsula in Siberia. 
Initially, they didn't realize the bone fragment came from a wolf at all; this was only determined using a genetic test back in the laboratory. 
But wolves are common on the Taimyr Peninsula, and the bone could have easily belonged to a modern-day wolf. 
On a hunch, the researchers decided to radiocarbon date the bone anyway. 
It was only then that they realized what they had: a 35,000-year-old bone from an ancient Taimyr wolf. 
The DNA evidence also shows that modern-day Siberian Huskies and Greenland sled dogs share an unusually large number of genes with the ancient Taimyr wolf. 
"The power of DNA can provide direct evidence that a Siberian Husky you see walking down the street shares ancestry with a wolf that roamed Northern Siberia 35,000 years ago," Skoglund says. 
To put that in perspective, "this wolf lived just a few thousand years after Neandertals disappeared from Europe and modern humans started populating Europe and Asia." 

Source: Cell Press [May 21, 2015]

Il più antico caso di cancro umano.

Il più antico caso di cancro umano.


Oldest case of human cancer discovered in Siberia 


More than 4,500 years ago, a Siberian man succumbed to a scourge all too familiar to modern humans, a disease that left telltale signs on his bones for Angela Lieverse and her colleagues to read and diagnose. 

In situ photograph of Gorodishche II, Burial 3 

[Credit: Angela Lieverse/ University of Saskatchewan] 

“This represents one of the earliest cases of human cancer worldwide and the oldest case documented thus far from Northeast Asia,” said Lieverse, a bioarchaeologist at the University of Saskatchewan. The findings are published in the journal PLOS ONE.

 Lieverse worked with Baikal– Hokkaido Archaeology Project colleagues Daniel Temple from the U.S. and Vladimir Bazaliiskii from Russia to examine the skeleton of an Early Bronze Age man. 
Exhumed from a small hunter-gatherer cemetery in the Cis-Baikal region of Siberia, he was not in good shape. By the time it took him, the cancer had riddled his bones with holes from head to hip, including his upper arms and upper legs, and virtually all points between. As he lay dying, severe pain and fatigue would have been his constant companions, punctuated by periods of panic as he struggled to breathe. 

Osteolytic and mixed (blastic and lytic) lesions on the left os coxae; a, medial view  of entire element; b, lateral view of ilium; c; posterior view of pubis  

[Credit: Angela Lieverse/University of Saskatchewan] 

When he passed, his community buried him in a fetal position in a circular pit.
 Unlike most men of this period, who would have been buried lying on their back with fishing or hunting gear, he was laid to rest with an ornamental bone and a bone spoon, intricately carved with a winding serpent handle. 
The researchers estimate he would have been between 35 to 40 years old. Lieverse and her team performed a differential diagnosis on the man’s remains, just as if he had died recently. 
After ruling out possibilities such as tuberculosis or fungal diseases, the most likely culprit was metastatic carcinoma, that is, cancer that starts in one part of the body and spreads. “It’s clear the disease had progressed considerably, metastasizing far beyond its original location in the body and contributing to his death,” she said. “His age and sex and the lesions on his bones point to lung cancer or possibly prostate cancer.” 

Diagrammatic representation of skeletal completeness and lesion distribution;  a, anterior view; b, posterior view 

[Credit: Angela Lieverse/ University of Saskatchewan] 

Lieverse explained that ancient skeletons exhibiting signs of cancer are quite rare, sparking the hypothesis that the disease is mostly a recent phenomenon, reflecting various aspects of our modern lifestyle. 

Siberia’s Cis-Baikal is a vast, mountainous region northwest of Lake Baikal. It is the deepest freshwater lake on earth, home to the world’s only freshwater seal, which would have made up part of the man’s diet, along with fish, wild game and seasonal plants—there were certainly no processed foods on the menu. 
These latest findings provide evidence that may help refute this hypothesis, Lieverse said. 

She suspects that, taking into account variables such as longer life expectancies, cancer may have been considerably more common in ancient times than is generally presumed. “As we become more familiar with what metastatic carcinoma looks like in the skeleton, the number of cases identified by bioarchaeological research is likely to increase,” she said. “A related example is scurvy. Once we knew what scurvy does to the skeleton and became familiar with the signs, identification of the disease increased.”


 Source: University of Saskatchewan [December 04, 2014]

L'Idolo di Shigir

Vorrei che si notassero alcuni fattori importanti, in questa notizia:

1) L'Idolo di Shigir (questo è il nome del reperto, un Idolo, in legno di un larice che aveva almeno 159 anni quando fu tagliato) non è un ritrovamento fuori contesto o d'origine dubbia. Fu trovato in uno stagno torbifero nel 1890, in una zona della Siberia Occidentale presso Kirovograd: era sepolto sotto 4 metri di torba e lo scavo in corso era motivato da una miniera d'oro di superficie. Fu ricomposto fino ad un'altezza totale di 2,8 metri da Dmitri Lobanov. Vladimir Tolmachev, nel 1914 rinvenne altri frammenti, per cui pare che inizialmente fosse molto più alto (5,3 metri: vedi i suoi disegni), ma sembra che purtroppo 1,93 mt della sua altezza siano andati persi durante guerre e rivoluzioni russe. Malgrado ciò, si tratta della più alta statua lignea esistente.
2) Gli studiosi che se ne occupano sono internazionalmente noti e non lavorano da soli. Stanno lavorando già dal 1997 in laboratorio.
3) Nessuno fa proclami circa il 'riscrivere la storia'. Certamente, si tratta di un idolo unico, istoriato a tutto tondo, che presenta sette facce e diverse figure ed è di significato incerto.
4) Sono tutti estremamente prudenti nel fare affermazioni riguardo il reperto (i risultati definitivi si avranno tra alcuni mesi). Non formulano neppure ipotesi su come l'idolo stesse in piedi: sembra che non fosse piantato nel terreno.
5) La datazione stessa sarà definita tra breve e si sa che avrà un'approssimazione di circa 50 anni: per ora è provvisoriamente stimata in 9500 anni fa.
6) Si ipotizza che la statua sia stata scolpita nel Mesolitico raschiando il legno con strumenti di pietra e che sia stata ricoperta con un 'codice crittografico' sconosciuto a noi: nessuno ritiene di poterlo decifrare, anche se si ritiene che i segni possano avere avuto un significato.
7) Si ammette unanimamente di trovarsi di fronte ad un'opera d'arte, che è due volte più vecchia delle piramidi (tanto per avere un punto di riferimento della sua antichità).
8) Si ammette trattarsi di un fortunatissimo ritrovamento, che è stato permesso solamente dal fatto che il legno di larice ha proprietà antisettiche, che sono state potenziate dalla torba in cui è affondato il tronco.
9) Qualcuno ha ipotizzato potersi trattare di un'antica scrittura (sarebbe la più antica in assoluto), ma gli scienziati subito avvertono che non vi è Consenso al riguardo.
10) Considera - Pasuco - quanta differenza tra questo modo di procedere, che è serio e scientifico, e ciò che si vede in luoghi più vicini a noi, da parte di persone permalose, che s'offendono terribilmente se le chiami 'ciarlatani'.


9,500 year old 

wooden idol carries 

encoded information 

 The Idol is the oldest wooden statue in the world, estimated as having been constructed approximately 9,500 years ago, and preserved as if in a time capsule in a peat bog on the western fringe of Siberia. 
Expert Svetlana Savchenko, chief keeper of Shigir Idol, believes that the structure's faces carry encoded information from ancient man in the Mesolithic era of the Stone Age concerning their understanding of 'the creation of the world'. 

Scientists close to precise dating of the Shigir Idol, twice as ancient as the  Egyptian Pyramids 

[Credit: Ekaterina Osintseva/Siberian Times] 

German scientists are now close to a precise dating - within five decades - of the remarkable artifact, which is a stunning example of ancient man's creativity. 
The results are likely to be known in late February or early March. 
Now the question is turning among academics to a better understanding of the symbols and pictograms on this majestic larch Idol, one of Russia's great treasures, which is now on display a special glass sarcophagus at its permanent home, Yekaterinburg History Museum, where Savchenko is senior researcher. 
German pre-historian Professor Thomas Terberger said: 'There is no such ancient sculpture in the whole of Europe. 
Studying this Idol is a dream come true. We are expecting the first results of the test at the end of winter, (early) next year.' 

The sculpture was found in 1890 preserved in peat bog on the western  fringe of Siberia [Credit: Ekaterina Osintseva/Siberian Times] 

Professor Mikhail Zhilin, leading researcher of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Archaeology, explained: 'We study the Idol with a feeling of awe. 
This is a masterpiece, carrying gigantic emotional value and force. 
It is a unique sculpture, there is nothing else in the world like this.  
It is very alive, and very complicated at the same time. 
'The ornament is covered with nothing but encrypted information. 
People were passing on knowledge with the help of the Idol.' 
He is adamant that we can draw conclusions about the sophistication of the people who created this masterpiece, probably scraping the larch [[pine]] with a stone 'spoon', even though the detail of the code remains an utter mystery to modern man. 

The sculpture may carry encoded information from ancient man in the Mesolithic  era concerning their understanding of 'the creation of the world'  

[Credit: Ekaterina Osintseva/Siberian Times] 

Asked if they lived in permanent fear of mighty forces of mysterious nature, nervously casting around, petrified by danger, he replied: 'Forget it. The men - or man - who created the Idol lived in total harmony with the world, had advanced intellectual development, and a complicated spiritual world.' 
'It is obvious that the elements of geometrical ornament had some meaning,' stated Savchenko and Zhilin in explaining the Idol's ancient markings. 
'The difficulty of interpretation is the polysemy symbolism of these symbols' - in other words, the possible multiple related meanings. 
According to ethnography, a straight line could denote land, or horizon - the boundary between earth and sky, water and sky, or the borderline between the worlds. 

Aggiungi didascalia

It is believed the sculpture reflects what these people looked like, with straight  noses and high cheekbones 

[Credit: Ekaterina Osintseva/Siberian Times] 

'A wavy line or zigzag symbolised the watery element, snake, lizard, or determined a certain border. In addition, the zigzag signaled danger, like a pike. Cross, rhombus, square, circle depicted the fire or the sun, and so on.' 
Savchenko and other museum staff have postulated that among its purposes was that of an early map, or navigator. 
Straight lines, wave lines and arrows indicated ways of getting to the destination and the number of days for a journey, with waves meaning water path, straight lines meaning ravines, and arrows meaning hills, according to this theory which has yet to be fully researched. Author Petr Zolin, citing scientific work by Savchenko and Zhilin, stated: 'The characters of Idol cannot have an unambiguous interpretation. If these are images of spirits that inhabited the human world in ancient times, the vertical position of figures (one above the other) probably relate to their hierarchy. 

The ancient idol is carved from the trunk of a larch conifer and stands 2.8 metres tall [Credit: Ekaterina Osintseva/Siberian Times] 

'Placing images on the front and back planes of the Idol, possibly indicate that they belong to different worlds. If there are depicted myths about the origin of humans and the world, the vertical arrangement of the images may reflect the sequence of events. Ornaments can be special signs which mark something as significant.' 
The Idol reflects what these people looked like, with straight noses and high cheekbones. The impression of the main three-dimensional face, with a gaping mouth, is of an Aztec look, but it is only because the part of the nose of the main face was broken. 
In all there are seven faces, six of which are one dimensional. 

There is no other ancient sculpture like it in the whole of Europe  

[Credit: Ekaterina Osintseva/Siberian Times] 

'It is clear that the faces together with the ornament form separate figures,' said Savchenko and Zhilin. 
'On both the front and back of the Idol there are three figures. 
Here they are located one above the other, and the upper seventh figure...connects both sides and crowns the composition.' 
Some have claimed the Idol includes primitive writing, which, if true, would be amongst the first on Earth, but there is no consensus among experts who have studied the Urals statue. 
The Idol was preserved due to a stroke of luck concerning its resting place in the Urals. 

'Placing images on the front and back planes of the Idol, possibly indicate that  they belong to different worlds' says Professor Mikhail Zhilin  

[Credit: Ekaterina Osintseva/Siberian Times] 

It happened 'thanks to a combination of antiseptics,' said Professor Zhilin. 
'The idol was made from the Phytoncidic larch, then 'canned' in turf which is an acid anaerobic environment that kills microorganism-destroyers and also has a tanning effect.' The scientists from the Lower Saxony State Office for Cultural Heritage are using AMS - accelerated mass spectrometry - enabling them to compare analysis of five microscopic samples of the larch from the idol with climate changes data for the past 10,000 years. This will allow them to figure out when exactly the 159 year old larch - from which the Idol is carved - grew. 

The ancient idol is on display in a special glass sarcophagus at its  permanent home in the Yekaterinburg History Museum  

[Credit: Ekaterina Osintseva/Siberian Times] 

The tests follow what Professor Terberger called 'a very successful summer trip'  in which 'we worked together with our Russian colleagues from the Yekaterinburg History Museum'. The Idol was originally recovered in January 1890 near Kirovograd; some 2.8 metres in height, it appears to have seven faces. 
It was protected down the millennia by a four metre layer of peat bog on the site of an open air gold mine. 
Lack of funding has, until now, prevented the proper age testing of this Urals treasure. Professor Uwe Hoysner,  from Berlin Archaeological Institute said: 'The Idol is carved from larch, which, as we see by the annual rings, was at least 159 years old. The samples we selected contain important information about the isotopes that correspond to the time when the tree grew.' 

The men - or man - who created the sculpture lived in total harmony  with the world, had advanced intellectual development, and a  complicated spiritual world says Mikhail Zhilin  [Credit: Ekaterina Osintseva/Siberian Times] 

The samples used for testing were cut in 1997. 
The Idol was extracted in several parts from the peat bog. Professor Dmitry. I. Lobanov combined the main fragments to reconstitute the sculpture 2.80m high but in 1914 the Siberian archaeologist Vladimir Tolmachev proposed a variant of this reconstruction by integrating previously unused fragments. 
Tragically, some of these fragments were later lost, so only Tolmachev's drawings of them remain.
However, these suggest the original height of the statue was 5.3 metres. 
Some 1.93 metres of the statue did not survive the 20th century's revolutions and wars and it is only visible on his drawings. 

Drawings of the idol by archaeologist Vladimir Tolmachev  
[Credit: Yekaterinburg History Museum] 

But even the size is it now makes it the highest wooden statue in the world. 
One intriguing question debated by Russian scientists is how the Idol - as tall as a two-storey house - was kept in a vertical position. 
Museum staff believe it was never dug into the ground to help it stand upright, and that it was unlikely it was perched against a tree, because it would have covered more than half of its ornaments. 


Author: Anna Liesowska | Source: The Siberian Times [October 23, 2014]

Sequenziato il primo uomo moderno

Anche se sembra un controsenso: è stato sequenziato il  genoma del più antico uomo moderno mai ritrovato. La fonte è fededegna: il Max Plank Institute, 
Svante Paabo.
Come è successo?
A partire da un reperto (il femore di un u.a.m.: uomo anatomicamente moderno) rinvenuto in Siberia e benissimo conservato.
Perché è importante? 
Perché ora possediamo il genoma del Neanderthal (insisto a scriverlo nel modo originario, con la 'acca'), di un Denisoviano e ora - finalmente - di un uomo moderno dell'epoca della divisione (tra uomini provenienti dall'Africa che sarebbero diventati rispettivamente Asiatici ed Europei), cioé 45.000 anni fa circa.
Questo materiale genetico - di ottima qualità - è stato confrontato con quello di uomini moderni contemporanei provenienti da più di 50 popolazini differenti.
Che cosa ci permette di osservare questo?
Molte cose, secondo Svante Paabo...
Intanto: il genoma  di questo uomo contiene circa il 2% di genoma del Neanderthal (cioé una percentuale simile a quella del nostro genoma attuale), ma trascritto in segmenti molto più lunghi di quelli attualmente presenti in noi. 
La Genetica può pertanto calcolare il tempo necessario, trascorso per ottenere la frammentazione di tale materiale in segmenti più brevi, per giungere fino alla situazione contemporanea. 
In questo modo si può stabilire che la mescolanza di genomi tra Neanderthal e uomo anatomicamente moderno avvenne circa 50-60.000 anni fa, dato che questo uomo siberiano dell'Età della Pietra viveva circa 7.000-13.000 anni dopo l'evento dell'incrocio tra le due specie affini.

Più importante ancora: l'ottima qualità del reperto - conservatosi indenne nel permafrost - ha permesso di riconoscere la frequenza delle mutazioni intervenute nel corso tempo: si calcola che si siano verificate circa una/due mutazioni all'anno nelle popolazioni umane, dal tempo in cui l'uomo siberiano di Usht'-Ishim visse. E questa frequenza è proprio la medesima osservata nella popolazione umana più recente, anche se è un po' inferiore a quella che era prima stata indirettamente stimata sui fossili, osservandone le divergenze.

La vera scienza ci offre sempre interessanti sorprese e molti insospettabili spunti per nuove considerazioni su vecchi argomenti.



Earliest modern human sequenced


  A research team led by Svante Paabo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, has sequenced the genome of a 45,000-year-old modern human male from western Siberia. 

The Ust'-Ishim femur 

[Credit: Bence Viola, MPI EVA] 

The comparison of his genome to the genomes of people that lived later in Europe and Asia shows that he lived close in time to when the ancestors of present-day people in Europe and eastern Asia went different ways. 
Like all present-day people outside Africa the Ust’-Ishim man carried segments of Neandertal DNA in his genome.

But these segments were much longer than the ones found in present-day humans and indicate that the admixture with Neandertals took place between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago. 

In 2008, a relatively complete human femur was discovered on the banks of the river Irtysh near the village of Ust’-Ishim in western Siberia.

Radiocarbon dating of the bone showed it to be about 45,000 years old. “The morphology of the bone suggests that it is an early modern human; that is an individual related to populations that are the direct ancestors of people alive today” says Bence Viola, an anthropologist who analyzed it. 

View of the Irtysh and Ust’-Ishim village in September 2014  [Credit: © Vyacheslav Andreev] 

“This individual is one of the oldest modern humans found outside the Middle East and Africa” he says. 
The research team sequenced this individual’s genome to a very high quality and compared it to the genomes of present-day humans from more than 50 populations. 

They found that the Ust’-Ishim bone comes from a male individual who is more related to present-day people outside Africa than to Africans thus showing that he is an early representative of the modern population that left Africa. 
When his genome was compared to people outside Africa, he was found to be approximately equally related to people in East Asia and people that lived in Europe during the Stone Age. 

“The population to which the Ust’-Ishim individual belonged may have split from the ancestors of present-day West Eurasian and East Eurasian populations before, or at about the same time, when these two first split from each other”, says Svante Paabo. 

Map of Pleistocene fossils with published nuclear DNA (orange: Neandertals,  blue: Denisovans, green: modern humans) 

[Credit: © MPI for  Evolutionary Anthropology/ Bence Viola] 

“It is very satisfying that we now have a good genome not only from Neandertals and Denisovans, but also from a very early modern human” he says. 

Paleoanthropologist Jean-Jacques Hublin, who was involved in the study, says that “it is possible that the Ust’-Ishim individual belonged to a population of early migrants into Europe and Central Asia, who failed to leave descendants among present-day populations”. Since the Ust’-Ishim man lived at a time when Neandertals were still present in Eurasia, the researchers were interested in seeing whether his ancestors had already mixed with Neandertals. 
They found that about two per cent of his DNA came from Neandertals – similar to the proportion found in present-day East Asians and Europeans. 
However, the lengths of Neandertal DNA segments in his genome are much longer than the ones found in present-day humans because he lived closer in time to the admixture event so that the Neandertal segments had not had time to become as reduced in size over the generations. 

Svante Paabo (left) and Nikolay Peristov discuss the Ust'-Ishim discovery  

[Credit: © MPI for Evolutionary Anthropology/ Bence Viola] 

“This allowed us to estimate that the ancestors of the Ust’-Ishim individual mixed with Neandertals approximately 7,000-13,000 years before this individual lived or about 50,000 to 60,000 years ago, which is close to the time of the major expansion of modern humans out of Africa and the Middle East”, says Janet Kelso, who led the computer-based analyses of the genome.

The high quality of this 45,000-year-old genome also enabled the team to estimate the rate with which mutations accumulate in the human genome.

They found that between one and two mutations per year have accumulated in the genomes of populations in Europe and Asia since the Ust’-Ishim man lived.

This is similar to recent estimates from counting genetic differences between parents and children, but lower than more traditional, indirect estimates based on fossil divergences between species.

The new study has been published in the journal Nature. 

Source: Max Planck Society [October 22, 2014]

Un altro, più antico, COLD CASE

Pubblico questo post in omaggio sentito a quei cretini che

sostengono l'archeologia non essere una Scienza. Se

l'archeologo mantiene una mentalità rigorosa e scientifica, 

non c'è quasi limite a ciò che egli può scientificamente 

ottenere. 

In genere, poi, chi sostiene quella tesi errata è anche uno di 

quelli che mescolano all'Archeologia altri fattori che non 

dovrebbero mai interessarla: vari interessi personali, 

vantaggi economici poco chiari, politica e promozione 

personale. 

Tutte cose che tra l'altro - con la Scienza - hanno molto poco 

in comune. 

Una mummia nel permafrost: fa quasi pensare all'Uomo di Similaun.

Era una donna giovane: una 'principessa' di circa 25 anni, probabilmente bellissima. Soffriva di osteomielite dall'adolescenza o addirittura dall'infanzia. 
Verso la fine della sua breve vita, probabilmente cadde (da cavallo?): il suo scheletro porta segni compatibili con un trauma del genere (fratture dell'anca destra con edema reattivo circostante, dislocamento dell'anca destra, una sottile frattura temporale). Si suppone che solo il trasferimento di una tribù nomade nei campi invernali potesse convincere una paziente così grave a montare a cavallo e trasferirsi: ecco perché s'ipotizza una caduta da cavallo. 
Tre cavalli sono stati sepolti con lei (per una sepoltura normale, uno sarebbe stato più che sufficiente): questo rende ragione della particolare stima e considerazione che la popolazione aveva per lei. Dal contenuto dello stomaco dei tre cavalli si è potuto stabilire che la donna fu sepolta in Giugno (anche se probabilmente morì a gennaio, o marzo). 
Era tatuata, sulle mani e su una spalla con una vera e propria opera d'arte (una specie di ariete fantastico, ritratto in un a sorta di 'flying gallop', che un tempo fu tipico degli Hyksos). 
Faceva uso di Cannàbis, probabilmente per un forte e persistente dolore cronico: nella sua tomba è stato trovato un contenitore per la canapa indiana. E probabilmente proprio lo stato mentale - quasi sempre alterato - della giovane, fece sì che si avesse per lei la stessa considerazione che si avrebbe per una veggente in contato con entità superiori. Infatti non fu abbandonata e lasciata morire, non se ne affrettò la morte. 
Fu seppellita da sola, in un tumulo personale e non con il resto dei familiari: questo è considerato indice di sacralità speciale, che la paragona ad una nobile di famiglia reale, e di nubilato. I suoi gioielli non erano della migliore qualità (si tratta di legno ricoperto di foglia d'oro), ma stranamente, era presente un raro specchio di fattura cinese con cornice di legno ed erano presenti semi di coriandolo, in genere destinati al solo uso delle sepolture reali. La sua mummificazione è stata accuratissima, certamente allo stesso livello di quelle reali.

E' stata uccisa, infine: e non da un uomo.

Si ipotizza che l'omicida sia stato implacabile ed abbia agito nel corso di circa cinque anni, lasciando segni ancora ben riconoscibili dall'Anatomia Patologica (la 'medicina forense'dei filmetti americani) - dopo 2500 anni - con i nostri mezzi d'indagine.

Una MRI (risonanza magnetica) ha permesso d'individuarlo senza dubbi: è un cancro  mammario al IV stadio, con metastasi ascellari linfonodali ed ossee vertebrali. Era ormai magrissima, defedata e semiparalizzata: probabilmente sempre sotto effetto dei farmaci, che le davano quelle visioni e quell'aspetto 'di chi parla con un altro mondo'. 

La bella profetessa/veggente degli Altai - della Cultura Pazyruc - è stata uccisa da un cancro primitivo della mammella destra, metastatizzato ai linfonodi ed a tre vertebre toraciche.

Gli anziani del posto credono tutt'oggi nei suoi poteri e domandano a gran voce che la principessa sia nuovamente deposta nel suo tumulo, a guardia di tutte le sventure che - come già è successo con inondazioni ed altri disastri - altrimenti si scateneranno sulla regione.





2,500 year old Siberian princess died from 

breast cancer, 

reveals MRI scan 




 Studies of the mummified Ukok 'princess' - named after the permafrost plateau in the Altai Mountains where her remains were found - have already brought extraordinary advances in our understanding of the rich and ingenious Pazyryk culture. 

'Princess Ukok' mummy in Anokhin museum, Gorno-Altaisk

 [Credit: Alexander Tyryshkin] 

The tattoos on her skin are works of great skill and artistry, while her fashion and beauty secrets - from items found in her burial chamber which even included a 'cosmetics bag' - allow her impressive looks to be recreated more than two millennia after her death. 

Now Siberian scientists have discerned more about the likely circumstances of her demise, but also of her life, use of cannabis, and why she was regarded as a woman of singular importance to her mountain people. 

Her use of drugs to cope with the symptoms of her illnesses evidently gave her 'an altered state of mind', leading her kinsmen to the belief that she could communicate with the spirits, the experts believe. 

The MRI, conducted in Novosibirsk by eminent academics Andrey Letyagin and Andrey Savelov, showed  that the 'princess' suffered from osteomyelitis, an infection of the bone or bone marrow, from childhood or adolescence. 

Close to the end of her life, she was afflicted, too, by injuries consistent with a fall from a horse: but the experts also discovered something far more significant. 

MRI scanning of 'Princess Ukok' mummy [Credit: 'Science First Hand'/Andrey Letyagin]


 'When she was a little over 20 years old, she became ill with another serious disease - breast cancer.  

It painfully destroyed her' over perhaps five years, said a summary of the medical findings in 'Science First Hand' journal by archeologist Professor Natalia Polosmak, who first found these remarkable human remains in 1993.
 'During the imaging of mammary glands, we paid attention to their asymmetric structure and the varying asymmetry of the MR signal,' stated Dr Letyagin in his analysis. 

'We are dealing with a primary tumour in the right breast and  right axillary lymph nodes with metastases.' 
'The three first thoracic vertebrae showed a statistically significant decrease in MR signal and distortion of the contours, which may indicate the metastatic cancer process.' 

He concluded: 'I am quite sure of the diagnosis - she had cancer. 
She was extremely emaciated.

Given her rather high rank in society and the information scientists obtained studying mummies of elite Pazyryks, I do not have any other explanation of her state. 
Only cancer could have such an impact.
 'Was it the direct cause of the death? Hard to say. 
We see the traces of traumas she got not so long before her death, serious traumas - dislocations of joints, fractures of the skull.

These injuries look like she got them falling from a height.' 

General MRI scans [Credit: 'Science First Hand', Andrey Letyagin] 

But he stressed: 'Only cancer could have such an impact. 
It is clearly seen in the tumour in her right breast, visible is the metastatic lesion of the lymph node and spine...She had cancer and it was killing her.'

While breast cancer has been known to mankind since the times of the Ancient Egyptians, a thousand years before it was recorded by Hippocrates, father of modern medicine, this is a unique case of the detection of the disease using latest technology in a woman mummified by ice. 
Dr Letyagin is from the Institute of Physiology and Fundamental Medicine, and Dr Savelov, an associate in the laboratory of magnetic resonance tomography at the International Tomography Centre, both of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Medical Science, both in Novosibirsk. 
From their work and other data, for example the last food found in the stomachs of horses buried alongside the ancient woman, Dr Polosmak has formulated an intriguing account of her final months hundreds of years before the birth of Christ.

'When she arrived in winter camp on Ukok in October, she had the fourth stage of breast cancer,' she wrote. 'She had severe pain and the strongest intoxication, which caused the loss of physical strength. 

Dr Andrey Letyagin; scans show right breast tumor and metastatic lymph nodes in the  right axilla and metastases in the spine, surrounded by edematous paravertebral fiber (bottom)  
[Credit: The Siberian Times/Andrey Letyagin]

 'In such a condition, she could fall from her horse and suffer serious injuries. She obviously fell on her right side, hit the right temple, right shoulder and right hip. 
Her right hand was not hurt, because it was pressed to the body, probably by this time the hand was already inactive.

Though she was alive after her fall, because  edemas are seen, which developed due to injuries.

'Anthropologists believe that only her migration to the winter camp could make this seriously sick and feeble woman mount a horse. 

More interesting is that her kinsmen did not leave her to die, nor kill her, but took her to the winter camp.'

 In other words, this confirmed her importance, yet though she is often called a 'princess', the truth maybe she was was - in fact - a female shaman. 'It looks like that after arriving to the Ukok Plataue she never left her bed,' she said.
 'The pathologist believes that her body was stored before the funerals for not more than six months, more likely it was two-to-three months. 
'She was buried in the middle of June - according the last feed that was found in the stomachs of horses buried alongside her.

The scientists think that she died in January or even March, so she was alive after her fell for about three to five months, and all this time she lay in bed.' 

Scans of the dislocated right hip, with bright red color marking edematous tissue in  right inguinal area 
[Credit: Alexander Tyryshkin, Dr Andrey Letyagin] 

Dr Polosmak says we should pay 'special attention' to 'the fact that likely she used some analgesics, with all the ensuing consequences.

 'In ancient cultures, from which there is a written testimony, such analgesics were used wine, hashish, opium, henbane, an extract of mandrake, aconite and Indian hemp. The Pazyryks knew hemp and its features.'

It is known that in her burial chamber was a container of cannabis.

'Probably for this sick woman, sniffing cannabis was a forced necessity,' said the scientist. 'And she was often in altered state of mind. 
We can suggest that through her could speak the ancestral spirits and gods. Her ecstatic visions in all likelihood allowed her to be considered as some chosen being, necessary and crucial for the benefit of society. 
She can be seen as the darling of spirits and cherished until her last breath.'

Evidently, shamans could often assume their powers after a significant illness: a woman might be physically weakened but able to develop her powers of concentration and meditation.

This would explain the care her people took to care for her and not leave her to die, or hasten death. 
It also helps to understand the way her burial was conducted in a style similar - but different - to royalty. 

Princess Ukok as the ice melted, with marked tattoos on her fingers; picture and drawing  of tattoos on her shoulder [Credit: Institute of Archeology and Ethnography,  Siberian Branch of Russian Academy of Science] 

She was buried not in a line of family tombs but in a separate lonely mound, located in a visible open place. This may show that the Ukok woman did not belonged to an exact kin or family, but was related to all Pazyryks, who lived on this lofty outpost, some 2,500 metres above sea level. 
This is an indication of her celibacy and special status.

Besides, three horses were buried with her.

In a common burial, one would be sufficient. 
Dr Polosmak has described how the jewellery in her grave was wooden, and covered with gold, so not of the highest quality of the period.

Yet there was a strange and unique mirror of Chinese origin in a wooden frame. 
There were also coriander seeds, previously found only in so-called 'royal mounds'. 

Her mummification was carried out with enormous care in a comparable manner to royals. 
Significantly, in the Altai Mountains, her supernatural powers are seen as continuing to this day.
 Elders here voted in August to reinter the mummy of the ice maiden 'to stop her anger which causes floods and earthquakes'. 
Known to locals as Oochy-Bala, the claim that her presence in the burial chamber was 'to bar the entrance to the kingdom of the dead'. By removing this mummy, the elders contend that 'the entrance remains open'. 
They are demanding that she is removed from a specially-built museum in the city of Gorno-Altaisk, capital of the Altai Republic, and instead reburied high on the Ukok plateau.
 'Today, we honour the sacred beliefs of our ancestors like three millennia ago,' said one elder. 'We have been burying people according to Scythian traditions. We want respect for our traditions'. 

Author: Anna Liesowska | Source: The Siberian Times [October 14, 2014]

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