The illustration to the right is of the first known Utility Belt. It is 5,300 years old, and was found on September 19^th, 1991 by walkers at the edge of the Tisenjoch Glacier in the Otzal Alps on the Austrian Italian Border.

It belonged to a gentleman referred to as ‘Otzi, the Iceman.’ He had expired in approximately 3,300 B.C from indeterminate causes. He had a number of wounds, including a severe arrow wound to his left shoulder. The sub-zero temperatures of his final resting place meant that both he and his portable goods were preserved for our perusal.

The item which brings him closest in mind to modern man is the ingenuity of his multipurpose belt. Six feet long and tapering from two and a quarter inches in the centre to a quarter of an inch at either end it was simply wrapped twice around his waist and knotted at the front, leaving the broadest part of the belt at the front. In this part was a pouch, created by sewing another piece of leather to the front of the belt, to which was attached a closely stitched leather lacing, with an opening at the top. The lacing continued beyond the pouch, with more widely spaced stitches, forming a series of tight loops, onto which tools could be attached. And tools were attached.

Firstly, and most obviously, he had a knife. It is a business like flint item, pictured right, the haft held in a wooden handle which has been reinforced with sinew, and would have been kept in the woven bark sheath shown next to it. Flint holds a vicious edge, and you can see that the relationship between blade and handle showed a fine understanding of the qualities of flint. The handle gives a good grip while the blade is long enough to stab, slash or rip but sturdy enough not to splinter. Flint is cruel but fragile – play with some in the garden some time, but with care.

He also carried a ‘flint retouching tool’ which was for putting an edge back on any of his cutting flints that had become blunt. The process is called pressure flaking: push hard down on a flat part of a flint near the edge and a flake falls off. Do this often enough and carefully enough and it will restore the edge to the flint. It was made from antler bone and wood and would have been the maintenance tool for his knife and on the two other flint tools; a 2.5 by 5 inch flint scraper and a small flint flake with a fine edge.

In addition his pouch contained a bone awl and fungus known as “True Tinder” Fungus which was used as a fire lighter. The fungus contained small nodules of Iron Pyrites which when struck with a flint produced sparks, igniting the fungus

This is a comprehensive Kit. He also carried a bow and arrows and a copper axe. With the bow and arrow he could bring down game, and with the Axe deliver the coup de grace, or slit a throat with his knife. The knife and the small flint would be excellent for butchering the beast; which could then be cooked on a fire lit with the flint and tinder. Any nicks or scrapes could conceivably be dealt with using the antibiotic moss, and the knife would be all he would need to consume his meal. Forks were not invented for another four and a half thousand years, until which time everybody would eat their meals with their knives and fingers.

The Iceman carries with him a belt that would still be of use today, had we the particular skills to use it. Was it made to measure, to the Iceman’s personal specification? I think not. The design is generic rather than specific. It could have been used by a hunter, a woodworker, a stoneworker, a leather worker, a chef or a shaman. The pouch and the loops are all-purpose, to be used for carrying and attaching a wide variety of implements. The implements would have been designed to attach to the belt, rather than the belt being designed around the implements. The belt would have been tested by use in a variety of situations and accepted as a standard, in the same way as we accept a steering wheel and pedals as the standard of controlling a motor vehicle.

A remarkable reconstruction of the Iceman’s belt can be seen to the right, made by a Mr Matthew Amt who specialises in manufacturing such things. He has duplicated most of the Iceman’s equipment, which can be seen at his website.

Mr Amt says that the belt only took him two or three hours to make and would probably have taken the original craftsman in the region of an hour. How long it takes to acquire the skills to accomplish such a task in an hour is another matter entirely.

It is very well made - it must have been to withstand 5,000 years of wear and tear. And Mr Amt’s replica shows that it was a thing of beauty, but it was well made in another sense, in that pride and craftsmanship are displayed in its creation. If it was made by the Iceman himself he would have taken no shortcuts in fabricating an instrument on which his life might depend. If it was made by specialised craftsman in the Iceman’s society, their place in that society would depend upon the quality of their work. The Iceman carried no money. A few hundred years after his death, in the Middle East, the Sumerians would start to use tokens that represented goods (such as cattle or crops) as part of an simple accounting system for the purpose of extracting taxes. These tokens would form the basis of both money and the earliest recorded writing.

In the Iceman’s society there was no portable wealth. It would have been possible to accumulate wealth in terms of fields or cattle or certain possessions; the Iceman himself carried a very fine Copper Axe, but for the main part an individual’s status, the respect with which they were treated would depend on the skills which they possessed and the dedication with which they applied their skills.

The Iceman would have valued his belt, and the person or people who made it for him. It is easy to wonder what he would have traded for it – a rabbit, or haunch of deer, but it is doubtful that his society was organised on a quid pro quo basis – people who needed food would have been provided with food, and they in turn would have provided the equipment required by those who provided the food.

The first Utility belt – produced by a society where resources where distributed on a basis of from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.

Utility items still carry that same cachet today - cost is not a measure of worth when the item must be dependable and durable day in, day out, in a variety of conditions, and these are still the objects that we carry on our belts: knives, tools, compasses, phones, meters and many more beside. Expensive is not always best. Cartier, Dolce & Gabena and the like do not feature largely in the Utility belt market, which is characterised by its suitability for purpose rather than to ostentatiously display wealth.