Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Civilisations & Empires
The alpine regions of Austria were cold, inhospitable places during the Ice Age 30,000
years ago and virtually impenetrable for human and beast. So it's not surprising that while
mammoths were lumbering across a frozen landscape, the more accessible plains and
Danube Valley in Lower Austria developed into early centres of civilisation. Several ar-
chaeological finds can be traced back to this period, including ancient Venus figurines that
are today housed inside Vienna's Naturhistorisches Museum. The starlet among the collec-
tion is the Venus of Willendorf, discovered in 1908 in the Wachau region of the Danube
Valley. The diminutive and plump 11cm figurine is made of limestone and estimated to be
around 25,000 years old.
A proto-Celtic civilisation known as the Hallstatt Culture - named after the town of
Hallstatt in the Salzkammergut where there was a burial site - took root in the region
around 800 BC. These proto-Celts mined salt in the Salzkammergut and maintained trade
ties with the Mediterranean. When other Celts settled in the late Iron Age (around 450 BC)
from Gaul (France) they chose the valley of the Danube River, but also the salt-rich re-
gions around Salzburg, encountering Illyrians who had wandered there from the Balkan
region as well as the Hallstatt proto-Celts. Gradually an Illyric-Celtic kingdom took shape,
known as Noricum, that stretched from eastern Tyrol to the Danube and the eastern fringes
of the Alps in Carinthia, also extending into parts of Bavaria (Germany) and Slovenia.
Today the towns of Hallstatt and Hallein have exhibits and salt works focusing on the
Hallstatt Culture and these Celtic civilisations.
ICE MAN
In 1991 German hiker Helmut Simon came across the body of a man preserved within the Similaun Glacier in the
Ötztaler Alpen, some 90m within Italy. Police and forensic scientists were summoned to the scene. Carbon dating
revealed that the ice man, nicknamed 'Ötzi', was nearly 5400 years old, placing him in the late Stone Age and
making him the oldest and best-preserved mummy in the world.
Ötzi became big news, more so because his state of preservation was remarkable; even the pores of his skin
were visible. In addition, Ötzi had been found with 70 artefacts, including a copper axe, bow and arrows, charcoal
and clothing. Physiologically he was found to be no different from modern humans. X-rays showed he had
suffered from arthritis, frostbite and broken ribs.
Not everybody was worried about these finer points, however. Several Austrian and Italian women contacted
Innsbruck University shortly after the discovery and asked to be impregnated with Ötzi's frozen sperm, but the
all-important part of his body was missing.
Ötzi was relinquished to the Italians to become the centrepiece of a museum in Bolzano in 1998. In September
2010 the family of the late Helmut Simon were rewarded €175,000 for his groundbreaking discovery.
