As I was speaking about things being hardwired into our brain from prehistoric times in a previous post, I just read something really depressing on the BBC about new genetic research they’ve done on that “Ice Man” they found in that glacier in the Italian Alps in 1991.
You may or may not remember on the news, when he was unearthed, he was found with all sorts of arrowheads and things sticking in his rib cage–obviously not a peaceful passing away of natural causes. Now scientists have found some DNA indicators that the Ice Man may have had some problems with sperm mobility and thus infertility.
And they think his infertility may have made him socially unpopular; perhaps since he didn’t have a family, maybe the way some families have the creepy uncle who never got married…
In any event, I’ve been thinking so much about how bad health can lead to infertility, not the other way around (i.e., how infertility can lead to your being killed by unnatural means). I’m not sure how valid the scientists’ conclusion, that the poor Ice Man’s lack of fertility and resulting lack of familiy made him so much of a social outcast that he was killed. Was he a threat because he was an unattached male? Was he considered a loser because he wasn’t able to procreate? Also how do we know he wasn’t perhaps caught in some very early caveman Enron-type scandal or something else totally unrelated to fertility? Interesting how we try to apply modern day standards to the ol’ Ice Man using very vague genetic clues.
Food for thought…
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