Italian 'cave dweller' Montalbini dead at 56
ROME — Italian sociologist Maurizio Montalbini, who spent months dwelling
in caves to study how the mind and body cope with complete isolation, has
died at 56.
Montalbini died of a heart attack Saturday while in a mountain hamlet near
the central Italian town of Macerata, said Guido Galvagno, a longtime
colleague. Galvagno said the death did not appear connected to Montalbini's
record-breaking cave stays.
Montalbini spent a total of two years and eight months underground since he
started his experiments in the 1980s, according to a biography on his Web
site.
In 1987 he claimed his first world record after spending 210 days alone in
a cave in the Apennine mountains. A year later he led an international team
of 14 spelunkers, including three women, to take the world group record
with an underground stay of 48 days.
During his endurance experiments Montalbini subsisted mostly on a
high-calorie diet of powdered foods and pills similar to those used by
astronauts
on space flights. Scientists on the outside monitored him through
instruments.
Montalbini's biography says his experiments were done in collaboration with
NASA and top universities worldwide. They yielded insights on the effects
of long-term isolation including weight loss, changes in the perception of
time and in the sleep and menstrual cycles.
For the sociologist, who worked with drug addicts before turning to
spelunking, the experiments were also a personal challenge of willpower and
endurance.
"One cannot fight solitude, one must make a friend of it," he said after
his 1987 exploit. "I succeeded in doing this. I carried everything inside me
for seven months - affections, convictions, ideals."
Montalbini broke his solo cave-sitting record in 1993 by living a year and
one day in an underground base built to study the reactions of individuals
and crews on simulated space missions.
In his last experiment, which ran through 2006 and 2007, Montalbini spent
235 days in the base built in the Apennine "Grotta Fredda" (Cold Cave).
Montalbini, who had no children, is survived by his wife, Galvagno said.
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