September 19 - Discovery of "Ötzi the Iceman"

nPosted on September 19, 2020

Key Points

The Alps are gorgeous mountains, known as the setting for the Sound of Music, Heidi, and bunches of other stories and movies, for the Matterhorn, and European ski destinations!

nAnd the Alps are where a mummy of a man who lived more than 5,000 years ago was found. Modern scientists have dubbed the man Ötzi, because the specific section of mountains where he was found is called the Ötzal Alps.

nYou may associate mummies with Ancient Egypt, but some mummies were not carefully created with spices and long strips of cloth – instead, they were somehow created by unusual natural conditions. Ötzi is the oldest natural mummy ever found in Europe.

nFound on this day in 1991 by two German tourists, Ötzi was assumed to be a more recently dead body of a mountaineer. Of course the tourists reported the death, and a mountain gendarme (a sort of police officer that maintains a mountain hut on the border of Austria and Italy) went up the next day to retrieve the body. He had a pneumatic drill AND ice-axes but was not able to remove the body from the ice, at least partly because of bad weather. The next day, eight groups traveled to the body in order to plan the extraction on the next day.

nThink how surprised those German tourists must have been when they found out how old the body they had found actually was!

nThe reason that Ötzi had mummified instead of breaking down was – as you may have guessed – that he was covered with ice shortly after he died. Scientists think he was murdered, since an arrowhead was discovered in one of his shoulders.

It’s often startling how much scientists can learn from ancient ruins or remains! They can estimate Ötzi’s age, height, and weight at the time of his death; he was about 45 years old, only 5 feet 3 inches (160 cm) tall, and only about 110 pounds (50 kg).

nFrom analysis of pollen, dust grains, and other items embedded in his tooth enamel, scientists have good guesses about where Ötzi spent his childhood and a different location where he lived as an adult. Scientists were able to figure out what Ötzi ate during his last two meals – in each meal he ate meat, grains (probably some sort of bread), roots, and fruits. The foods included meat from ibex, chamois, and red deer. Frozen alongside the body are kernels of sloes, which are small plum-like fruits, seeds of flax and poppy and wild berries, and grains of wheat and barley. It’s likely that Ötzi was carrying food in some sort of pouch or pocket that froze along with him.

Chamois

Alpine ibex

Red deer

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nScientists can even figure out about where and when the most recent meal was eaten: in a mid-altitude pine or other conifer forest, in the spring or early summer. Scientists know that because of very fresh, well-preserved grains of pollen mixed in with food.

A reconstruction of what Ötzi may
have looked like, based on
scientific evidence.

nScientists may even have leads on Ötzi’s profession. He had both copper particles and arsenic in his hair, and his axe blade was 99.7 % pure copper. These clues indicate that he may have been involved with copper smelting. The wear on Ötzi’s leg bones make it apparent that he routinely walked long distances, which might indicate that he was a shepherd.

Believe it or not, scientists also have indications of medical problems, including lactose intolerance, and timing of recent illnesses.

nAlso, Ötzi had 61 tattoos on his body. For a while there, he was the oldest known human mummy with tattoos, but since his discovery other truly ancient tattooed mummies have been found.

nThe tattoos don’t seem to be pictures like so many modern ones, but patterns of lines: