The iceman's tools.

[jackknife]

How slow do you have to be on the run to be caught and frozen by a glacier?

TF

Apparently he was fast enough to outrun the guy who shot him in the back, before he dropped dead. Gives a new perspective on the "one shot stop" thing.

I can only wonder, if for years afterward in a little alpine villige, there was a argument of heavy arrow point vs light arrow point?

Mountain man 1; "Ya see? if you'd used the 240 flint arrow point you'd have dropped the guy."

Mountain man 2; "Oh yeah? The 240 has a trajectory like a rainbow, I'd never have hit 'em."

Mountain man 1; "Well ya may as well as not hit him, he ran off with that copper ax. That thing was worth a fortune! Those 125 obsidian points just don't have the stopping power!"

 

[stitchawl]

It is amazing how similar his toolkit is to that many of us carry today.

That's because so many of us are about the same age he was...


Stitchawl

 

[abo4ster]

HEY!!! Seeing the iceman's stuff is on my bucket list. On a side note, I saw Ishi's tools earlier this year and that was pretty cool.

I looked online and could not confirm that the Iceman's exhibit will be there in the next two weeks which is when I will be in the neighborhood. Anybody got any info on the exhibit?

 

[Andrew Colglazier]

How slow do you have to be on the run to be caught and frozen by a glacier?

TF

Did anybody answer this question?

They surmise that he was injured, climbed high into the mountains where he found a cave or depression in the mountain. He froze, then the glacier covered him.

Andy

 

[DOC-CANADA]

regarding the age thing- I was in a prolonged debate about the rise of agriculture and adult disease a couple years ago. I have to do this from memory, but IIRC, once you got past a certain childhood age (there were significant drop offs at around 5 and mid teens, I think), in most pre or non agricultural cultures the adult life expectancy was in the 50s. (there's a certain amount of horitculturalism and pastoralism in here, what changed with the ag boom was the large scale farming idea, primarily of cereals.)

From an evolutionary perspective our lifespans evolved long before agriculture.

Early agricultural societies saw an average DROP in life expectancy for adults, but also saw a larger population increase and an overall (once you get rid of epidemic disease) lowering of infant and childhood mortality over time. There's a bit of debate about the mortality demographics there, as some cultures didn't consider a child to be "real" for a certain period of time due to high infant mortality rates and a trend to under report that goes back quite a ways in many cultures.

In any case, the death rate between early adulthood and what we'd term middle age was quite low. If you made it to adulthood, you could generally look forward to several decades of fun!

Hey koyote,

Thought you might be interested in this. Scroll down to the first post.

Doc

 

[Foilist]

Just like his copper ax, Our bushcraft knives are a totem or charm as well as a tool.

Aha - I think that succinctly describes what makes all of us on this forum tick.

I've been thinking lately about why I find edged tools so appealing in a away that is different from other tools and implements (maybe there's a garden rake or toilet plunger forum somewhere, but I have not looked). Certain things like knives, guns, motorcycles, etc. have been described before as "charismatic objects," in the sense that you have a strong reaction to them - positive or negative - you cannot have neutral feelings about them.

 

[MBTull]

Quiet Bear,

I saw Ishi's tools as well. To me, it was kind of sad how little was left. Someof the tools were from his people and it is unclear whether or not they were actually his. I asked one of the museum workers if there was anything else in storage and was told that everything was in the display case. Ishi in Two Worlds describes him spending a lot of time while he lived in SF making various objects. There were movies, photos and sound recordings. The movies are lost except for a few stills. The photos, probably Prof. Kroeber's best Ishi work, survive. I think some of the sound recordings survived as well.

 

[koyote]

Hey koyote,

Thought you might be interested in this. Scroll down to the first post.

Doc

Doc- yeah, that's about right. There's some debate about the infant mortality rates and we're still fighting the prejudice about the 40 year thing. (which is much more accurate to certain agricultural societies) I've seen people put the math for infant/childhood mortality at an aggregate 15% (all death pre adulthood)

 

[Cpl Punishment]

Just thought of one more thing on this:

Since this guy survived in this lifestyle with similar tools to us, we should take this as a lesson that mental preparedness and practice of skills is what will keep you alive, not the latest and greatest gadgets and tools.

Only thing is, he did have the latest and greatest of tools for his time.

 

[tholiver]

wow great thread!
thanks for all the links.
hmmm paleoplanet website eh?
That looks like a cool website i must create an account there...
D'oh apparently i did that already!
Can't remember when though.

I hate it when i join up somewhere and then forget about it and then forget about the site, lol!

 

[Elen]

Only thing is, he did have the latest and greatest of tools for his time.

Very true! But that's not to say that they were actually needed ("needed" in the meaning "necessary, required"). Otherwise, it would be a strage world indeed: any new innovation in the field of tools would retroactively make survival before the invention of said tool impossible. Our iceman friend had what he had because he could, not because he needed to. Even though technology has advanced a "little" since his day, he could still survive the modern day outdoors with what he had then - tools far less able than the latest and greatest of our day. And so can we, with some practice.

That's one of my pet peeves, really, and this is directed at no-one in particular, just my usual ranting. A lot of folks seem to define "need" very loosely - so that "needed" is closer in meaning to "useful" than to "necessary." Sure, a lot of the gear we carry today is very useful. But almost none of it is actually needed as in absolutely necessary. Looking at the iceman as he was in life, I would wager that his clothing weighed more than all the tools he carried put together (food and drink obviously do not count as tools). Do you know why that is? Because in any even remotely cold environment clothing is the most important part of your gear. Ironically, in the modern day, a lot of folks overlook it and yet greatly emphasize less than necessary gear from GPS to even just knives. With enough experience, one will inevitably reach the obvious conclusion that in wilderness survival very many things are useful but very few are necessarily needed. I like good gear as much as anyone, and there's no reason not to carry good stuff - but there's also no reason to think all of it is actually needed instead of just convenient and useful to have around. If one wanted to, one could survive quite a lot with just some clothes, a flint knife and a copper axe - or even just some clothes. It's skill that mostly counts, although there's always at least a few other things. Over here in the north, it's clothing. Starvation and thirst will kill you a lot slower than the cold around these parts.

 

[misanthropist]

Very true! But that's not to say that they were actually needed ("needed" in the meaning "necessary, required"). Otherwise, it would be a strage world indeed: any new innovation in the field of tools would retroactively make survival before the invention of said tool impossible. Our iceman friend had what he had because he could, not because he needed to. Even though technology has advanced a "little" since his day, he could still survive the modern day outdoors with what he had then - tools far less able than the latest and greatest of our day. And so can we, with some practice.
That's one of my pet peeves, really, and this is directed at no-one in particular, just my usual ranting. A lot of folks seem to define "need" very loosely - so that "needed" is closer in meaning to "useful" than to "necessary." Sure, a lot of the gear we carry today is very useful. But almost none of it is actually needed as in absolutely necessary. Looking at the iceman as he was in life, I would wager that his clothing weighed more than all the tools he carried put together (food and drink obviously do not count as tools). Do you know why that is? Because in any even remotely cold environment clothing is the most important part of your gear. Ironically, in the modern day, a lot of folks overlook it and yet greatly emphasize less than necessary gear from GPS to even just knives. With enough experience, one will inevitably reach the obvious conclusion that in wilderness survival very many things are useful but very few are necessarily needed. I like good gear as much as anyone, and there's no reason not to carry good stuff - but there's also no reason to think all of it is actually needed instead of just convenient and useful to have around. If one wanted to, one could survive quite a lot with just some clothes, a flint knife and a copper axe - or even just some clothes. It's skill that mostly counts, although there's always at least a few other things. Over here in the north, it's clothing. Starvation and thirst will kill you a lot slower than the cold around these parts.

This makes some sense...although it does not consider the possibility that conditions under which a person is surviving can change.

For instance, we evolved in a place where, obviously, absolutely no tools were needed. But we ended up in a lot of places where a lot of equipment is needed.

People definitely do not need tools of any sort to survive, provided they are in the right climate. In the mountains, it's entirely possible to go from somewhere you can survive with one set of tools to somewhere you will die without more tools over the course of a few hours.

So to say Oetzi had what he could have, not what he needed to have, does not address the possibility that he may have needed those tools to survive in the specific environment he was in at the time of his death.

 

[Elen]

So to say Oetzi had what he could have, not what he needed to have, does not address the possibility that he may have needed those tools to survive in the specific environment he was in at the time of his death.

True, of course. And it also doesn't address the possibility that he may have actually needed more to survive in the situation that he was in than the tools that he actually had with him. He was killed, after all. I'm thinking a good rifle might have changed that. I was thinking of survival in general. There are always special situations and environments that require unusual amounts of preparation and tools.

Conditions certainly change with respect to terrain and weather, and that's always been the case and always will. But in terms of wilderness survival, I would say conditions in general in our modern world are far better than those in Oetzi's world. Our world has more settlements and more people who are less inclined toward killing you and looting your corpse than his world did, and that means easier rescue after shorter walks. I don't really see how we would now need more tools in general to survive in the wilderness than he needed then, assuming of course reasonable skill level. On the other hand, it's certainly a lot easier to get lost in the wrong place in our day - Oetzi's people didn't have airplanes or submarines with which an unexpected technical failure could see a man dumped literally in the middle of nowhere. It is something to think about, perhaps.