Ötzi (; , also called The Iceman, Similaun man, or Tyrolean Iceman, is the natural mummy of a man who lived during the 4th millennium BC. Ötzi's remains were discovered on 19 September 1991 in the Ötztal Alps (hence the nickname "Ötzi") at the Austria–Italy border. He is Europe's oldest known natural human mummy, showing an unprecedented view of Chalcolithic (Copper Age) Europeans.
Because of the presence of an arrowhead embedded in his left shoulder and various other wounds, researchers believe that Ötzi was killed by another person. The nature of his life and the circumstances of his death are the subject of much investigation and speculation. His remains and personal belongings are on exhibit at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, South Tyrol, Italy.
Discovery Ötzi was discovered on 19 September 1991 by German tourists Helmut and Erika Simon near the Tisenjoch pass in the Ötztal Alps. At about above sea level, they saw the upper part of his body protruding from the ice. Because the site was close to the Austria–Italy border, both Austrian police and the Italian Carabinieri were notified. At first, Ötzi was thought to be a mountaineer who had recently died.
Attempts to recover his body began the next day but were delayed by bad weather and continued until 23 September. During this time, mountaineers Reinhold Messner and Hans Kammerlander examined some of Ötzi's belongings, including leather clothing, birch bark containers and an axe. After seeing a drawing of the axe, Messner suggested that the remains might be much older than first thought.
Before Ötzi was recovered, several people visited the site. Fragile objects were stepped on and others were removed before their locations had been recorded, destroying some evidence about where his belongings had originally been lying. Researchers later interviewed visitors to reconstruct the locations of the finds.
Ötzi was finally removed from the ice on 23 September, four days after his discovery. No archaeologist was present. A dagger was found beside him, and a long wooden object nearby was later identified as a bow. His body was flown to Vent and then taken to the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Innsbruck for examination.
It was still unclear whether Ötzi had been found in Austria or Italy. The border established under the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye of 1919 was intended to follow the Alpine watershed, but snow and ice had made the area difficult to map accurately. On 2 October, thirteen days after Ötzi's discovery, an official survey placed the find site inside Italy, in South Tyrol. South Tyrol claimed ownership of Ötzi, but agreed that his body could remain temporarily in Innsbruck while examinations continued.
Condition When Ötzi was recovered in September 1991, he was a wet mummy that had been naturally preserved in glacier ice. Although much of the fluid in his body had been lost through dehydration, he remained preserved almost in his entirety. His tissues, bones and internal organs were well preserved, and his mummified body measured about in length.
Other parts of Ötzi's body had disappeared during decomposition. His epidermis, or outer layer of skin, had been shed, and his body hair had been lost. His fingernails and toenails had also fallen off. Clumps of his dark hair were found around the body, while one fingernail and two toenails were recovered during later excavations.
Ötzi suffered further damage during his recovery and subsequent handling. A pneumatic drill damaged his hip, his left arm was broken during handling, and elements of his clothing were destroyed. His longbow was also broken during the recovery. His clothing had already been damaged by wind and weather after the surrounding ice melted and was further damaged during the recovery.
By 24 September 1991, the day after his recovery, Ötzi's body had begun to decompose. He was placed in a refrigerated cell at the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Innsbruck that simulated glacier conditions. Fungus also began growing on his skin while he was at the mortuary, and within days scientists began more rigorous efforts to stabilize the mummy.
Clothing and associated items Clothes
Ötzi wore a cloak made of woven grass and a coat, a belt, a pair of leggings, a loincloth, and shoes, all made of leather of different skins. He also wore a bearskin cap with a leather chin strap. The coat, belt, leggings and loincloth were constructed of vertical strips of leather sewn together with sinew. His belt had a pouch sewn to it that contained a cache of useful items: a scraper, a drill, a flint flake, a bone awl and a dried fungus (see below).
Shoes The shoes were waterproof and wide, seemingly designed for walking across the snow. They were constructed using bearskin for the soles, deer hide for the top panels, and a netting made of tree bark. Soft grass went around the foot and in the shoe, functioning like modern socks.
The shoes have since been reproduced by a Czech academic, who said that "because the shoes are actually quite complex, I'm convinced that even 5,300 years ago, people had the equivalent of a cobbler who made shoes for other people". The reproductions were found to constitute such excellent footwear that a Czech company reportedly offered to purchase the rights to sell them. However, a more recent hypothesis by British archaeologist Jacqui Wood posits that Ötzi's shoes were actually the upper part of snowshoes. According to this theory, the item currently interpreted as part of a backpack is actually the wood frame and netting of one snowshoe and animal hide to cover the face.
Analysis The leather loincloth and hide coat were made from sheepskin. Genetic analysis showed that the sheep species was nearer to modern domestic European sheep than to wild sheep; the items were made from the skins of at least four animals. Part of the coat was made from a domesticated goat belonging to a mitochondrial haplogroup (a common female ancestor) that inhabits central Europe today. The coat was made from several animals from two different species and was stitched together using hides. The leggings were made from domesticated goat leather. A similar set of 5,000-year-old leggings discovered in Schnidejoch, Switzerland, were made from goat leather as well.
Irish and Italian researchers were able to undertake an analysis of the mitochondrial DNA from six different items of the body's clothing and published their findings in the journal Scientific Reports. These showed that the shoelaces were made from the European genetic population of cattle. The quiver was made from wild roe deer, and the fur hat was made from a genetic lineage of brown bear which lives in the region today.
Tools and equipment
Other items found with the Iceman were a copper axe with a yew handle, a chert-bladed knife with an ash handle and a quiver of 14 arrows with viburnum and dogwood shafts. Two of the arrows, which were broken, were tipped with flint and had fletching (stabilizing fins), while the other 12 were unfinished and untipped. The arrows were found in a quiver with what is presumed to be a bow string, an unidentified tool, and an antler tool which might have been used for sharpening arrow points. There was also an unfinished yew longbow that was long.
Among Ötzi's possessions were berries, two birch bark baskets, and two species of polypore mushrooms with leather strings through them. One of these, the birch fungus, is known to have anthelmintic properties, and was probably used for medicinal purposes. The other was a type of tinder fungus, included with part of what appeared to be a complex firelighting kit. The kit featured pieces of over a dozen different plants, in addition to flint and pyrite for creating sparks.
Ötzi's copper axe was of particular interest. His axe's haft is long and made from carefully worked yew with a right-angled crook at the shoulder, leading to the blade. The axe head is almost pure copper. It was produced through casting and did not undergo mechanical hardening. Though copper ore sources in the Alpines are known to have been exploited in Ötzi's time, a 2017 study indicated that the copper in the axe came from southern Tuscany. It was let into the forked end of the crook and fixed there using birch-tar and tight leather lashing. The blade part of the head extends out of the lashing and shows clear signs of having been used to chop and cut. Such an axe would have been a valuable possession, important both as a tool and as a status symbol.
Initial analysis The body was extracted on 22 September and salvaged the following day. It was transported to the office of the medical examiner in Innsbruck, together with other objects found nearby. On 24 September, the find was examined there by archaeologist Konrad Spindler of the University of Innsbruck. He dated the find to be "at least four thousand years old" on the basis of the typology of an axe among the retrieved objects. Tissue samples from the corpse and other accompanying materials were later analyzed at several scientific institutions and their results unequivocally concluded that the remains belonged to someone who had lived between 3359 and 3105 BC, or some 5,100 years prior. More specific estimates find that there was a 66% chance he died between 3239 and 3105 BC, a 33% chance he died between 3359 and 3294 BC, and a 1% chance he died between 3277 and 3268 BC.
Scientific analyses Physical condition At the time of his death, around 3230 BCE, Ötzi was about 45 years old. His body measured about tall, and his living weight has been estimated at about . A 2006 study using computed tomography (CT) scans of his skeleton produced somewhat different estimates of and .
Ötzi's leg bones also provide evidence of his level of mobility. Analysis of his tibia, or shinbone, found structural adaptations associated with high mobility over rough terrain. Compared with most other Neolithic European men examined by the researchers, Ötzi appears to have had a more mobile lifestyle.
Examination of Ötzi's bones, joints and muscles found evidence of long-term damage. Medical imaging showed damage to his spine and arthritis and other abnormalities affecting his right knee and ankle. Researchers concluded that these conditions probably caused chronic pain in his back, right knee and right ankle during the later years of his life.
Health and disease Ötzi had several health problems. He was infected with Trichuris trichiura (whipworm), an intestinal parasite. The severity of the infection is unknown.
By his mid-40s, his teeth were heavily worn and had several cavities, including one that reached the dental pulp. He also had periodontitis, with some loss of the bone supporting his teeth, and an injured upper front tooth. Researchers linked the cavities to dietary changes associated with the spread of agriculture during the Neolithic.
One surviving fingernail has three Beau's lines, grooves caused when illness interrupts nail growth. They indicate that Ötzi was ill three times during his final six months, most recently about two months before his death, when the illness lasted at least two weeks.
Ötzi was also infected with Helicobacter pylori. In 2016, researchers reconstructed the bacterium's 5,300-year-old genome from his digestive tract. It belonged to hpAsia2, an Asian-derived bacterial population that existed in prehistoric Europe before later mixing with African-derived strains.
DNA recovered from Ötzi also contained sequences belonging to the bacterial genus Borrelia. A 2012 study identified them as Borrelia burgdorferi, a cause of Lyme disease. A 2013 reanalysis found that most of the sequences could not be assigned to a particular species and that species-specific sequences matched several Borrelia species. The researchers concluded that the ancient strain was genetically distinct from known B. burgdorferi.
Provenance