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#9777177 - 02/11/09 04:23 PM (11 years, 7 months ago) Edit Reply Quote Quick Reply

Iceman's mushrooms key in Copper Age and today

February 11, 2009 - seacoastonline.com

By Sue Pike



In 1991 a 5,000-year-old corpse was found in a glacier in the Ötztal Alps of Italy. The oldest natural human mummy ever found in Europe, the Iceman, or Otzi, became famous for the glimpse he gave us into the lives of Copper Age Europeans. We now know what Otzi wore, details of his last meal and old injuries, where he grew up and perhaps how he died. Among other equipment, we know that he carried two types of mushrooms: a necklace strung with pieces of the birch polypore (Piptoporus betulinus) and what appeared to be a fire-starting kit containing remnants of another mushroom known as the tinder polypore (Fomes fomentarius).



This past weekend, I spent time out in the woods with my ethnomycologist friend, Lawrence Millman, (who, by the way, gave an excellent reading from his new book at the York Public Library last Friday night) looking for winter mushrooms.



A common one that most of us are familiar with is the artist's conk, a large shelf fungus that can be used for etched designs and paintings. Artist's conks are polypores, mushrooms distinguished by three characteristics: most grow on wood and are known as wood rotters, most are shaped like shelves, hence the common name "bracket fungus," and most have tiny pores instead of gills on the undersides of their caps (the name polypore means "many pores").



A walk in the woods this time of year, without the lush summertime vegetation to obscure the skeletal profiles of the leafless trees, is the best time to go looking for polypores; they literally pop out at you from the sides of trees, fallen logs and ancient stumps. When you see polypores on a tree, if it isn't dead already, it soon will be, as these are wood rotters: decomposers of dead wood and, in many cases, causing rot as they attack a living tree.



Along with artist's conks, we found a large number of other fungi, among which were the two mushrooms carried by Otzi himself: the birch polypore and the tinder polypore. Birch polypores grow exclusively on birch trees: beautiful rounded shelf fungi that remind me of meringues, creamy white underneath with a tan cap. Tinder polypores are hoof-shaped perennials and are also usually found on birch. Like the artist's conks, these fungi can be years old, so I try to resist collecting them, as, even in the depths of winter, they are the fruiting (reproductive) part of a much larger organism actively doing its part to cycle old wood and its rich nutrients back into the forest.



So, why was Otzi carrying birch polypores and tinder polypores? The birch polypores could have been used as a treatment for intestinal parasites, which Otzi had in abundance. The tinder polypores, as their name suggests, are used with flint and steel as fire starters and when dry can be pounded into a felt-like material that keeps embers smoldering and was used throughout the north to carry fire in one's travels.



And, according to Lawrence, tinder polypores have numerous traditional medicinal uses: from anti-inflammatory, antibacterial properties to cauterizing wounds and treating cancer.



Five thousand years is such a long time, yet so much of Otzi's Neolithic world surrounds us to this day. A chance encounter with some mushrooms in the woods was, for me, a link to that time. Finding the tinder and birch polypores was a chance for me to shift the way I view the world from our modern detachment to Otzis' richer, broader view, where the nature around us is not just beautiful but essential to survival.



Sue Pike of York has worked as a researcher and a teacher in biology, marine biology and environmental science for years. She teaches at York County Community College and St. Thomas Aquinas High School.



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Posts: 185 StrangerRegistered: 01/27/09 Re: Iceman's mushrooms key in Copper Age and today [Re: veggie]

#9777689 - 02/11/09 07:09 PM (11 years, 7 months ago) Edit Reply Quote Quick Reply

Nothing like starting your morning with some good old mushroom learning. I am fascinated with all fungi in this world whether they are psychoactive or not.



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