World's Oldest Tattoo Written In Soot 68
ewenc writes "A series of tattoos belonging to Otzi the 5300 year-old Tyrolean Iceman are made of soot, reports New Scientist. Mountain climbers discovered Otzi's mummified body in the Austrian-Italian alps in 1991. What's left of his skin was littered with simple cross and line markings. Electron microscopy and spectroscopy now show that Otzi's tats are made of double-bonded carbon indicative of soot, as well as silicate crystals that probably came from rocks surrounding a fire pit."
Re:But what about.... (Score:4, Informative)
My Mum has "soot" tattoos from her youth days (Score:3, Informative)
This is a practice that is probably still going on to these days.
My mum, who is from the Middle East and in her early 70s has had self-applied tattoos made out of soot since she was a teenager.
They're not like the tattoos one would be used to, but are just simple and crude symbols, one of them a cross. I am sure this is a practice still in many countries, especially 3rd world countries.
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Re:Acupunture points. (Score:3, Informative)
Are you implying homeopathic medicine has no effect on people? i.e. same as a placebo?
Yes of course.
Are you suggesting that a solution diluted until there are no measurable levels of any active ingredient has any effect beyond that of plain water?
If so you'd better be writing this up because you'll get Nobel Prizes for chemistry, physics and medicine. Not to mention $1,000,000 from the James Randi Education Foundation.
This is the point in the discussion where someone will either mention their great aunt's best friend who was "cured of cancer" or start warning us of a vast medical conspiracy to keep homoeopathy a secret. Bonus points go to anyone who tells us all the repeatable controlled studies into the matter are flawed for some vague reason.