Otzi Discovered: Iceman Reveals Prehistoric Secrets

Two German hikers descending from the Fineilspitze peak in the Otztal Alps on September 19, 1991, noticed what appeared to be a human body melting out of the ice at an elevation of 10,530 feet on the Austrian-Italian border. Helmut and Erika Simon assumed they had found a recently deceased mountaineer. The corpse turned out to be more than 5,300 years old, the best-preserved prehistoric human ever discovered and a window into Copper Age Europe so detailed that scientists could reconstruct his last meals, his health problems, and the violent manner of his death. Otzi, as he was named after the mountain range where he was found, had been naturally mummified by the alpine ice and snow that covered him shortly after his death around 3300 BC. His skin, organs, bones, and even the contents of his stomach survived intact. He was approximately forty-five years old, five feet three inches tall, and suffered from arthritis, whipworm parasites, and Lyme disease. His body bore over sixty tattoos, clusters of lines and crosses concentrated near his joints and spine, which researchers believe may have been therapeutic, possibly an early form of acupuncture. The artifacts found with him were equally extraordinary. He carried a copper axe, a flint knife, a bow and arrows, a birch-bark container holding embers wrapped in maple leaves for starting fires, and clothing made from the skins of at least five different animal species. His equipment revealed a level of technological sophistication that challenged assumptions about Copper Age life, and the copper axe suggested he held high social status. The most dramatic discovery came in 2001, when an X-ray revealed an arrowhead lodged in his left shoulder. Otzi had been shot from behind, and the arrow severed a subclavian artery, causing him to bleed to death. DNA analysis of blood found on his weapons and clothing matched at least four other individuals, suggesting he had been in close combat with multiple attackers before his death. The Iceman was not a lost shepherd caught in a storm but the victim of a murder over five millennia ago, now housed in a custom-built museum in Bolzano, Italy, kept in a climate-controlled chamber at minus 6 degrees Celsius.