On September 19, 1991, two hikers found a frozen body in the Austrian Alps. At the time, they had no way of knowing how historic their find was, as it was later revealed that it was the oldest human ever found, now known as Ötzi the Iceman.
Ötzi was not only more than 5,300 years old, but he was also the victim of a murder. It is now believed that the Neolithic man was murdered on the mountain before being naturally mummified by the frigid temperatures. In fact, the amazing freshness of her body is still mind-blowing today.
The accidental discovery of Ötzi, the iceman
When German tourists Helmut and Erika Simon found the frozen corpse of Ötzi the Iceman on the glacier in the Schnalstal/Val Senales valley in 1991, the couple initially thought they had stumbled upon an unfortunate mountain companion who had recently had suffered a fatal accident.
Only Ötzi’s head and shoulders could be seen above the ice that froze the rest of his body. He was face down most of the time.
The Austrian rescuers who rushed to the scene, not realizing how old and delicate the find was, damaged the body while trying to remove it from the ice. A jackhammer damaged Ötzi’s hip and thigh, and his backpack and the bow he was frozen next to were also broken.
But over the next three days, a small team of archaeologists who unearthed the frozen body realized their mistake. After taking the body to a medical examiner’s office in Innsbruck, Austria, they determined it was at least 4,000 years old.
It was later confirmed that “Ötzi the Iceman”, as an Austrian journalist nicknamed him in reference to the site of his discovery in the Ötztal Valley Alps, had died sometime during the Copper Age or Neolithic, between 3350 and 3100 BC, making him the oldest preserved human ever found.
But what made this find even more notable was that, unlike Egyptian and Inca mummies dissected by desert climates, Ötzi was a “wet” mummy, found in a perfectly preserved combination where the glacier in which he died froze his body. while the humidity of the ice kept his organs and skin practically intact.
What was life like in the Neolithic?
A close-up of the 5,300-year-old murder victim when she was found.
Because Ötzi was so well preserved, researchers were able to perform what was essentially a modern autopsy, providing a fascinating glimpse into what life was like for this man who lived 35 centuries ago.
Not only was he determined to be over 40 years old when he died, but Ötzi was probably also thin, weighing 50 kilograms and standing 5 feet 6 inches tall.
He was also found to have intestinal parasites, stomach ulcers, arthritis and Lyme disease. He was also found to share a genetic affinity with the inhabitants of the islands of Sardinia and Corsica and may have been lactose intolerant.
The contents of his stomach also showed various types of pollen, suggesting that he not only died in spring or summer, but that he had traveled through different elevations in the mountains shortly before his death.
Meanwhile, the excellent state of preservation of his skin also showed that he had 61 tattoos, which had been made by rubbing charcoal into small cuts.
Before Ötzi, scientists could only guess what life was like in the Copper Age. But from their clothing, researchers deduced that 3,500 years ago people wore leggings made of cloth and animal skins. The arrow feathers of Neolithic man also suggested that his people understood general ballistics.
Although the frozen body of Ötzi the Iceman provided a wealth of information to scientists, the cause of his death was not discovered until a decade after his discovery. That’s when a scan using new X-ray technology revealed something lodged in the elderly man’s left shoulder that had previously gone unnoticed: an arrowhead.
Investigating Copper Age Murder
A murder is still a murder, no matter what century it occurred in, so the museum where Otzi now rests called Detective Inspector Alexander Horn of the Munich police to see what he could discover.
Inspector Horn was surprised to note that the body was “in better condition than recent homicide victims I have worked with who were found outdoors,” even though this particular body predated the Pyramids.
Public domain Ötzi was in such good condition that researchers were able to practically perform a modern autopsy on it.
In 2012, a report was published speculating how the Iceman died. The nature of the wound suggested he had been shot in the back, but the fact that the victim’s belongings had not been stolen led Inspector Horn to conclude that this was a personal homicide, although arrests are unlikely to be made. .
But the mysteries surrounding Ötzi, the Iceman, go far beyond his murder. Since his body was removed from the place where it had rested for thousands of years, rumors have spread that there was a curse on anyone who disturbed it.
In fact, Helmut Simon, one of the hikers who found Ötzi in 1991, died during a freak snowstorm and was found buried under ice and snow not far from where he made the history-changing discovery.
Ötzi is currently in a freezer at the South Tyrolean Archaeological Museum in Bolzano, Italy. It is estimated that between 10 and 15 scientists apply to study its remains each year.
