Six thousand six hundred years and not hear them. He seems to be sleeping the Lyskamm Mummy, the late Neolithic Alpine marmot. A discovery that is incredible due to its age (it is the oldest mummy ever found in Italy), the state of conservation and the randomness of the discovery).
For the first time since discovery, from June 14th the mummy can be seen live inside the Efisio Noussan Regional Museum of Natural SciencesIn the Saint Pierre Castlethe structure that has led the recovery, conservation and study operations of the find over the last two years.
The specimen will be housed in a special room display case which will be able to host it for the next 500 years: the internal environment is free of oxygen, completely eco-sustainable and independent of electricity, with the possibility of calibrating the chemical-physical parameters if necessary, preventing the deterioration of the mummy.
It was an August morning 2022 when the mountain guideto Corrado Gaspard «he stumbled» on the east face of Lyskammglacier in the group of Monte Rosa at altitude 4291 metersin a small marmot curled up on a rock inside a block of ice.
After the cautious recovery operations, with the experts and the authorities, here is the helicopter flight on August 14th alongside Velca Botti, biologist from the Natural Sciences Museum. The. is born Marmot Mummy Project, multidisciplinary team to investigate the marmot with researchers from the Museum of Natural Sciences and those from theEURAC Research Institute for the Study of Mummies in Bolzano (where the famous mummy of Ötzi). Here are the dissolution operations, the radiocarbon dating that dates it back to middle Holocene (about 6,600 years ago), while the team is joined by archaeologists, biologists, geneticists, glaciologists, naturalists and veterinarians.
Among the first questions to be resolved: what climate was there at the time where the glacier is today, to allow the life of a small herbivore like the marmot? What exactly happened on those days thousands of years ago, when Val d’Aosta was just starting to be colonized by the ancient Salassi?
And then, what kind of marmot was it, the one from Lyskamm, and how much does it resemble ours? From Friday, even inexperienced visitors will be able to see the mummy and have their say, and perhaps find a name for the ancient Aosta Valley, in the wake of its illustrious South Tyrolean colleague (only a thousand years younger) and other famous fossils, such as the Scipionyx samniticus, a small dinosaur found in Pietraroja, in the province of Benevento, and preserved there today. For everyone, now, he is simply Ciro. A celebrity.
 marmot in the world on display for the first time. Discovering the Lyskamm Mummy){kind=link}