From Peru’s ice maiden to Italy’s ice man

Published in 2008

American anthropologist-archaeologist Johan Reinhard is continuing his exploration and research around the world related to sacred sites, many of them on mountain tops. “In 2006, I undertook a month's research on Bali, investigating beliefs about volcano worship. I've never seen a society in which mountains/volcanoes played a more dominant role,” he explains.

A Laureate of the 1987 Rolex Awards and a National Geographic Society explorer-in-residence, Johan Reinhard is best known for his discoveries of the remains of Inca human sacrifices on mountain summits in the Andes, including the 500-year-old “Ice Maiden” whose mummy he discovered in 1995.

In recent years, he has begun working again on underwater archaeology projects – an activity that interested him first in the mid-1960s, in the Mediterranean, off the Italian coast, and at various times in the years since. “The main research I did in 2007 related to underwater archaeological research in lakes in Mexico. I went to Mexico on a recce in February to examine the possibility of conducting underwater archaeology in lakes located on Mt Toluca [an Aztec site] near Mexico City and in Lake Catemaco, a [pre-Columbian] Olmec site in the Tuxtla Mountains near the Gulf of Mexico. I then participated in the first stage of the Toluca project undertaken during late April-May 2007.”

A key discovery by Reinhard and other archaeologists during diving expeditions in a lake in the crater of Mt Toluca were wooden sceptres shaped like lightning bolts. These sceptres, which apparently were placed in lakes to induce rain storms, match descriptions of items used in offerings to the Aztec rain god written five centuries ago by Spanish priests and conquistadors.

In another project in 2007, Reinhard worked on a film about Otzi, the 5,300-year-old “Ice Man” found in the Italian Alps in 1991, as well as giving lectures and talks, writing articles and appearing in films about archaeology in many different countries.

“In 2006, I was also a member of a panel that selected the new Seven Wonders of the World for the ABC [American Broadcasting Companies] and USA Today series,” says Reinhard.

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