Salt Men

The Salt Man was discovered in Iran, in the Chehrabad salt mines located on the southern part of the Hamzehlu village, on the west side of the city of Zanjan, in the Zanjan Province. The head and left foot are currently on display in a glass case at the National Museum of Iran in Tehran.

Discovery

In the winter of 1993, miners came across a body with long hair, a beard and some artifacts. These included the remains of a body, a foreleg inside a leather boot, three iron knives, a woolen half trouser, a silver needle, a sling, parts of a leather rope, a grindstone, a walnut, some pottery shards, some designed textile fragments, and finally a few broken bones. The body had been buried in the middle of a tunnel of approximately 45 meters length.

Three other corpses, including a woman, were discovered later in the same salt mine.

Researches

After archeological studies which included C14 dating of different samples of bones and textiles, the saltman was dated to about 1700 years ago. By testing a sample of hair, the blood group B+ was determined.

Three dimensional pictures (scans) show the fractures around the eye and various damages that occurred before death as result of a hard blow.Visual characteristics presented long hair and beard and a golden earring on the left ear indicating that he was a highranked man.But the cause of his presence and death in the salt mine of Chehrabad remains a mystery.

Pictures

ources

* Description of the exhibits, National Museum of Iran, Tehran.

External links

* [http://www.payvand.com/news/05/may/1022.html Payvand]
* [http://www.chnpress.com/news/?Section=2&id=5663 CHN]
* [http://poundster.com/iran/salt-man-national-museum-iran-tehran Poundster]