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Oldest Intact Red Blood Cells Found on Iceman
sciencehabit writes "A team of researchers has zoomed in on two spots on the body of the Iceman, a mummified, 5300-year-old hunter found frozen in the Alps in 1991: a shoulder wound found with an embedded arrowhead and a hand lesion resembling a stab wound. The scientists used atomic force microscopy, a visualization method with resolution of less than a nanometer, to scan the wounds for blood residue. They discovered red blood cells — the oldest in the world to be found intact — as well as fibrin, a protein needed for blood to clot. The presence of fibrin indicates that the Iceman, nicknamed Ötzi, didn't die immediately after being wounded."
Now we can clone this caveman creature, on a private island, with a theme park tourist-attraction setting! Spare no expense, of course!
There's a spot in User Info for World of Warcraft account names? Really?
Off our meds today, are we?
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
It's groundbreaking! Scientists have proved that people 5000 years ago had blood! Expect it to be in the newspaper headlines tomorrow morning...
Allow me to... [sunglasses]
Spearhead this one.
THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU FIND A STRANGER IN THE ALPS!
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BMO
Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING
Its a unique glimpse into a long vanished way of life and people, an ancient culture of which very little if anything survives today. Some of us find every little detail to be quite fascinating, and who knows, maybe we'll be able to put a few more pieces together and build a more complete picture of our ancestors.
Yes, it does, really. They researched this. Humans are the only mammal with a glans shaped like ours, and in simulations it proved to be dramatically more effective at removing recently deposited semen than the glansless penii of other primates.
Sure it has. And there are lots of parts that we have copies of that are more than a few hundred years old. So how is that relevant in the slightest.
If you have some strange irrational fear of the bible as a set of documents then we have a bunch of records from China related to marriage significantly older than a few hundred years.
Confucius talked about it a lot, for example. Or is that all edited by the illuminai in your paranoid world?