Brrrr! It’s a chilly day here in Illinois with all the wind. I’m not complaining however. Can you imagine being frozen in a glacier for thousands of years and suffer from Lyme disease?! Whew, I can’t image that ever actually happening to anyone.
Doctors examining the body of Ötzi, the Iceman with Lyme disease bacterium.
Oh wait, it did happen! Ötzi, the iceman mummy, suffered through this exact situation near the Austrian-Italian border and is believed to be “at least 4000 years old” (South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology, Ötzi the Iceman). Poor Ötzi, I can’t imagine being frozen for thousand of years. He actually passed away from a spear in his shoulder. When Ötzi was discovered in the Alps, further investigation of his body showed that he had a Borrelia-like bacterium in his DNA. Researchers analyzed part of Ötzi’s pelvic and found two-thirds of the genome of the bacterium Borrelia burdorferi (Touched by Lyme: The world’s oldest Lyme disease patient), the cause of Lyme disease. Lyme disease was first discovered in 1982 in Lyme, Connecticut which is where the disease gets its name (A Brief History of Lyme Disease in Connecticut). With Ötzi’s genome analyzed and traces of Lyme disease being found, this could make Lyme disease thousands of years older than what it was originally thought to be.
Mummies are always a great find but Ötzi’s discovery is very meaningful to tick research now that we have evidence of Lyme disease dating back thousands of years. Ötzi was also discovered with various tattoos found around his body. Researchers believe that due to the location of the tattoos, they might have been placed there for therapeutic relief similar to acupuncture today (What Ötzi the Iceman’s Tattoos Reveal About Copper Age Medical Practices). Tattoos were found around joints that are commonly used such as the wrists and ankles (joint pain is a common symptom in Lyme disease).
If interested in learning more about our Iceman mummy, feel free to check out an entire website dedicated to learning more about him found here.
Until next week,
Tattle.
