Discovery and Study of Otzi, the Iceman | Early European History And Religion

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DISCOVERING OTZI, THE ICEMAN

Otzi when he was discovered

Otzi was found in September 1991 near a 10,500-foot-high pass at the top in the Schnals Valley in Italy, 300 feet from the Austrian border. His head and shoulders had been exposed for around a week, then covered again by a few inches of snow, when he was discovered by a German couple, Helmut and Erika Simon, who were hiking in the area and had wandered off a path. Erika saw him first. She noticed a head and shoulders sticking out of the ice and first thought it was a discarded doll.

Finding the Iceman was an incredible stroke of luck. The snow and ice that had covered him for millennia and preserved him hadn't melted away that long before he was discovered and few days after he was discovered a big snow storm hit the area again that would have covered him again. The shallow basin he was discovered in kept him frozen, preserved and in one piece. If he been in a glacier he would have pulverized into Iceman dust.

Also a stroke of luck was the way his corpse was embalmed in snow and ice soon after he died so that so much could be inferred the body. It seems his body was dried by wind and sun and quickly blanketed by snow and ice in a late spring or early summer snow storm and was situated in a high ravine in such a way that the Niederjoch Glacier flowed over him, preserving him without breaking him apart. Exceptionally warm weather in 1991 melted the ice and allowed him to be found.

What Happened to Otzi After His Death

A study published November 7, 2022 in the journal Holocene suggested that Otzi likely thawed and refroze repeatedly in the 1,500 years following his death. Lars Pilø, a glacial archaeologist and the study’s lead author, told Gizmodo: “We conclude that the find circumstances surrounding Ötzi are not a string of miracles, but can be better explained by normal processes on glacial archaeological sites.”

The raised questions the prevailing story of Otzi’s death, arguing that he did not die in the gully where he was found. Rather, his remains may have been carried there by the periodic thawing of the ice that surrounded his body. According to Live Science: The most significant proposal in the new study is that Ötzi didn’t die at the bottom of the gully where he was found, but rather that his body was carried there as the ice thawed and refroze over several summers. Early investigations proposed that Ötzi was killed in the gully in the fall season, and that his body was protected there from the crushing pressure of a glacier above. But analysis of the food in Ötzi’s intestine suggests instead that he died in the spring or early summer, when the gully would have been filled with ice, Pilø said. [Source: Tom Metcalfe. Livescience, November 23, 2022]

In the new study, the authors propose that Ötzi died somewhere on the surface of a stationary ice patch — not a moving glacier — and that his remains and artifacts were carried into the gully by the periodic thawing and refreezing of the ice. That means the body and artifacts were exposed at times, and may have been submerged in melted ice water, but they nonetheless stood the test of time for thousands of years. So, it’s likely that other long-dead bodies may have been preserved in the same way, he said.

Moving the Iceman

mountains where Otzi was found

Otzi should have been slowly and carefully removed from the ice by archaeologists who would have diligently recorded every detail about his location, position and stuff found around him. That didn’t happen. Instead he was hacked out of the snow by well-meaning hikers, with ski poles and ice axes, who assumed he was a long-dead mountain climber. One of the "sticks" used to pry him loose turned out to be his bow. A policeman assisting with a jackhammer tore a hole into the Iceman's left hip and damaged his thigh. The unfinished bow he carried in his backpack was broken into two pieces. His backpack was torn apart. By the time a forensic team arrived from Austria the site had been badly trampled upon.

And even then the debacle continued. When he was lifted out of the ice the remnants of his clothing were lost and some witnesses said they heard a cracking noise (later discovered to be the noise of an arm bone being broken). He was airlifted to the nearest village were he was shoved into a coffin for the car ride to Innsbruck.

Despite all this, when experts finally got a good look at him they were still amazed by how well preserved the body was. His brain, internal organs, and even one of his eyeballs were intact. Early reports that his penis was missing turned out to be unfounded. It was shriveled but there.

Fight Over the Iceman’s Body

Soon after the Iceman was taken to Austria it was discovered that he had actually been found on Italian soil and the Italians wanted him back. An investigation found that he lied on Italian soil 100 meters from the Austrian border. Later an agreement was worked out allowing the Austrians to keep him for three years and return him in 1998. In January 1998, the Austrians turned the Iceman over to Italian authorities and he was placed in an archaeology museum in Bolzano in northern Italy. He was transported packed in dry ice in a refrigerated truck, whose departure time was kept secret to avoid possible attacks from Austrian nationalists.

Otzi is now kept in a special vault on the second floor of the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in the old Banca d’Italia building in Bolzano, Italy. He can be viewed through a window. The vault where he is kept is kept at a constant temperature of 20.3̊F in humidity between 95 and 98 percent.

The is window Otzi is viewed through is about 18 inches square. The room is barely illuminated. Otzi is naked, and laying on his back with his left arm positioned awkwardly across his neck. His his eye is open. Bob Cullen wrote in Smithsonian magazine: “The body looks like a skeleton wrapped tightly in hairless skin’skin the brown of braised turkey. It gleams with a glaze of ice that is left undefrosted to protect it...It’s mouth is frozen in an expression which displays a few worn, chipped teeth.

In his current state he is 1.6 metes (5 feet 3 inches) tall and weighs 13.78 kilograms (30.32 pounds). As of February 2003, his body had been scanned five times: the first time with conventional X-ray machines, then digital X-rays and three other times with computer tomography (CT scans). When he was taken to the hospital for CT scans he was packed in ice and given a police escort for the five minuet ambulance ride. The scans were done quickly as possible while he was packed in ice to prevent any thawing. In the Alps a stone obelisk marks the general area where he was found. The exact spot is marked by splotch of red paint on a boulder.

Ötzi Research

20120207-Otzi Museumoetzi_in_der_ausstellung.jpg Researchers have inspected almost every square centimeter and every aspect of Otzi’s remains, revealing everything from his medical history (Ötzi had Lyme disease and hardening of the arteries) to the origin of his ancestors (who likely came from the Middle East perhaps via Sardinia or Corsica). Over the decades, scientists have used an array of high-tech tools, including 3D endoscopy, CT scans and DNA analysis to examine the iceman and create a detailed narrative of his life [Source: Andrew Lawler, National Geographic, October 21, 2021]

According to CNN: The existing body of science on Ötzi is astonishingly comprehensive. Stomach contents yielded information on his last meal and where he came from, study of his DNA has revealed his ancestry and appearance, his weapons showed he was right-handed, and his clothes gave a rare look at what ancient people actually wore. . [Source: Katie Hunt, CNN, April 10, 2024]

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Ötzi's discovery on September 19, 1991, a three-day Congress was held from September 19-21, 2016 at the International Mummy Congress in Bozen-Bolzano. According to the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology: “Since the man from the ice came on the scene on has not ceased to fascinate scientists from all over the world. No corpse has been more thoroughly investigated. "What concerns us most these days is to know who the man from the ice was, what role he played in society and what happened to him in the last days of his life. Sophisticated procedures, now available to scientists, are continually supplying us with new evidence," said Angelika Fleckinger, Director of the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology which helped to organise the Congress. [Source: South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology, September 23, 2016]

"In terms of his significance for science, Ötzi is not simply an isolated mummy discovery. He could be seen as a typical European from earlier times and is precious for this reason alone," explained the anthropologist Albert Zink from EURAC Research, the scientific leader of the congress. "Ötzi is so well preserved as a glacier mummy and through this alone, he serves us researchers as a model for developing scientific methods which can then be used on other mummies," said Zink.

Studying the Iceman

Stephen S. Hall wrote in National Geographic, “After Austrian authorities first recovered the mummy in 1991, scientists in Innsbruck cut a large gash across his lower torso as part of their initial investigation, along with other incisions in his back, at the top of the skull, and on his legs.

Otzi CY scan

The most astonishing revelation came in 2001, when a local radiologist named Paul Gostner noticed a detail that had been overlooked in the images: an arrowhead buried in the Iceman's left shoulder, indicating that he had been shot from behind. Later work by Gostner and his colleagues with more powerful CT imaging devices revealed that the arrow had pierced a major artery in the thoracic cavity, causing a hemorrhage that would have been almost immediately fatal. The oldest accidentally preserved human ever found was the victim of a brutally efficient murder.

Other scientists filled in biographical details. Analysis of chemical traces in his bones and teeth indicated that Ötzi, as he is also called, grew up northeast of Bolzano, possibly in the Isarco River Valley, and spent his adulthood in the Venosta Valley. Pollen found in his body placed his final hours in the springtime, and his last hike probably along a path up the Senales Valley toward an alpine pass just west of the Similaun Glacier. Close examination of his hand revealed a partially healed injury, suggestive of a defensive wound from an earlier fight. DNA analysis of food remnants found in his intestines — his stomach appeared to be empty — indicated that sometime before he met his demise, he had eaten red meat and some sort of wheat. Putting these facts together, scientists theorized that adversaries had an altercation with the Iceman in the valley south of the pass, chased him, and caught up with him on the mountain, where the body was discovered more than 5,000 years later.

Unfreezing the Iceman

Stephen S. Hall wrote in National Geographic, Radiologist Paul Gostner “took a closer look at the Iceman's guts. Though he had retired, the radiologist kept studying the CT scans at home as a kind of hobby, and in 2009 he became convinced that scientists had mistaken the Iceman's empty colon for his stomach, which had been pushed up under his rib cage and appeared to Gostner to be full. If he was right, it meant the Iceman had eaten a large, and presumably leisurely, meal minutes before his death — not the sort of thing someone being chased by armed enemies would likely do.” [Source: Stephen S. Hall, National Geographic, November 2011]

"Gostner came over and told us he thought the stomach was full," Albert Zink, director of the EURAC Institute for Mummies and the Iceman in Bolzano, told National Geographic. "And we thought, OK, then we have to go inside and sample the stomach." After further thought, Zink and his colleagues drew up a more ambitious plan: a head-to-toe investigation involving seven separate teams of surgeons, pathologists, microbiologists, and technicians. Perhaps most remarkable, this choreographed intervention would be accomplished without making any new incisions in the Iceman's body. Instead, the scientists would enter the body through the "Austrian windows" — their name for the overenthusiastic cuts made by the initial investigators. "This will happen once," Zink said, "and then never again for many, many years."

Stephen S. Hall wrote in National Geographic, “Shortly after 6 p.m. on a drizzling, dreary November day in 2010, two men dressed in green surgical scrubs opened the door of the Iceman's chamber in the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, Italy. They slid the frozen body onto a stainless steel gurney. One of the men was a young scientist named Marco Samadelli. Normally, it was his job to keep the famous Neolithic mummy frozen under the precise conditions that had preserved it for 5,300 years... On this day, however, Samadelli had raised the temperature in the museum's tiny laboratory room to 18 degrees C (64 degrees F). [Source: Stephen S. Hall, National Geographic , November 2011]

"With Samadelli was a local pathologist with a trim mustache named Eduard Egarter Vigl, known informally as the Iceman's "family doctor." While Egarter Vigl poked and prodded the body with knowing, sometimes brusque familiarity, a handful of other scientists and doctors gathered around in the cramped space, preparing to do the unthinkable: defrost the Iceman. The next day, in a burst of hurried surgical interventions as urgent as any operation on a living person, they would perform the first full-scale autopsy on the thawed body, hoping to shed new light on the mystery of who the Iceman really was and how he had died such a violent death.

"Egarter Vigl and Samadelli carefully transferred the body to a custom-made box lined with sterilized aluminum foil. In its frozen state, the Iceman's deep caramel skin had a dignified luster, reminiscent of a medieval figure painted in egg tempera. With the agonized reach of his rigid left arm and the crucifixate tilt of his crossed feet, the defrosting mummy struck a pose that wouldn't look out of place in a 14th-century altarpiece. Within moments, beads of water, like anxious sweat, began to form on his body. One droplet trickled down his chin with the slow inevitability of a tear."

Iceman Autopsy

Otzi's arrow hole

"This is the brain," announced neurosurgeon Andreas Schwarz, as he maneuvered a neurological endoscope into the top of the Iceman's head. “Like the other scientists in the room,” Hall wrote, “Schwarz was wearing 3-D glasses, and as he inched the instrument deeper inside the skull, a blurry 3-D image appeared on a computer monitor. It was a little after 1 p.m., and by that point the Iceman had already undergone six hours of poking, probing, gouging, and sample gathering. The surgical teams had taken snippets of muscle and lung. They had bored a hole in his pelvis to collect bone tissue for DNA analysis. They had rummaged around his thorax, trying to get close to the arrowhead and the tissue around it. They had even plucked some of his pubic hair. His skin had lost its luster and had a dull, leathery look, like a chicken wing left in the freezer too long. [Source: Stephen S. Hall, National Geographic , November 2011]

Stephen S. Hall wrote in National Geographic, “Now they were peeking inside his brain to see if a mysterious shadow on a previous CT image might be an internal clot, or hematoma, at the rear of the skull, indicating a blow to the head. But the operation was not going smoothly. Schwarz's endoscope kept bumping into ice crystals that blurred the camera lens. After an hour, the neurosurgery team finished up, not entirely sure whether they had obtained a viable sample.

The initial attempts to explore the stomach were also frustrating. Peter Malfertheiner, of the Otto-von-Guericke University of Magdeburg, tried to insinuate an endoscope down the Iceman's throat into the stomach, but five millennia of atrophy and mummification blocked the way. Egarter Vigl stepped in with a less delicate approach. Using the large Austrian window at the lower end of the torso, he stuck a gloved hand into the Iceman's gut. He pulled out two large chunks of undigested food, then switched to a kitchen spoon and scooped several more ounces from the Iceman's very full stomach.

By the end of the day, the laboratory freezer brimmed with 149 biological samples — "enough for about 50 papers," quipped one of the biologists. As soon as the autopsy concluded, Samadelli lowered the temperature in the laboratory below freezing. The next morning he and Egarter Vigl spruced up the body with a fine spray of sterilized water, which froze on contact. Then they slid the Iceman back into his high-tech igloo and closed the door.

Findings from the Iceman Autopsy

The autopsy had taken about nine hours; analysis of the material gleaned will take years. The first revelations were disclosed in June 2011, when Zink and his colleagues presented some of their initial findings at a scientific meeting. Thanks to the DNA in a tiny speck of pelvic bone culled during the autopsy, the Iceman has joined the company of renowned biologists James D. Watson and J. Craig Venter as one of a handful of humans whose genomes have been sequenced in exquisite detail. [Source: Stephen S. Hall, National Geographic , November 2011]

The genetic results add both information and intrigue. From his genes, we now know that the Iceman had brown hair and brown eyes and that he was probably lactose intolerant and thus could not digest milk — somewhat ironic, given theories that he was a shepherd. Not surprisingly, he is more related to people living in southern Europe today than to those in North Africa or the Middle East, with close connections to geographically isolated modern populations in Sardinia, Sicily, and the Iberian Peninsula. The DNA analysis also revealed several genetic variants that placed the Iceman at high risk for hardening of the arteries. ("If he hadn't been shot," Zink remarked, "he probably would have died of a heart attack or stroke in ten years.") Perhaps most surprising, researchers found the genetic footprint of bacteria known as Borrelia burgdorferi in his DNA — making the Iceman the earliest known human infected by the bug that causes Lyme disease.

The autopsy results have also rewritten the story of the Iceman's final moments. The neuroscientists determined that blood had indeed accumulated at the back of the Iceman's brain, suggesting some sort of trauma — either from falling on his face from the force of the arrow, Zink speculated, or perhaps from a coup de grâce administered by his assailant. DNA analysis of the final meal is ongoing, but one thing is already clear: It was greasy. Initial tests indicate the presence of fatty, baconlike meat of a kind of wild goat called an alpine ibex. "He really must have had a heavy meal at the end," Zink said — a fact that undermines the notion that he was fleeing in fear. Instead, it appears he was resting in a spot protected from the wind, tranquilly digesting his meal, unaware of the danger he was in.

A: Ötzi and the contents of his stomach. B: Meat fibres from his stomach. C: Plant remains

Locating and Studying Otzi’s Stomach

Maya Wei-Haas wrote in National Geographic: Ötzi the Iceman’s stomach wasn’t where it was supposed to be. The misplaced organ eluded researchers for some 20 years. But in 2009, while looking at new radiographic scans, they finally found it — inexplicably pushed up under his ribs, where the lower lungs usually sit. What’s more, it was completely full. [Source: Maya Wei-Haas July 12, 2018]

In the late 90s, with Ötzi’s stomach nowhere to be found, researchers studied the nitrogen isotopes of the mummy’s hair for dietary clues, which suggested the Iceman was a vegetarian. Later analysis of his colon contents pointed to Ötzi’s omnivorous ways, revealing he ate not only cereals but also red deer and goat meat in the day before his death. They located the wandering organ by examining Ötzi’s gall stones, which form in the gallbladder, a small sack sitting below the liver near the stomach. By lining up the position of surrounding organs in radiographic images, the team finally found the stomach.

To sample it, however, scientists had to first defrost the mummy, which is kept at a chilly 21.2 degrees Fahrenheit to prevent microbial invasion. They then used an endoscopic tool to pull 11 blobs of brownish yellow material from his stomach and intestines. Unlike the mushy intestinal material, the crumbly stomach stuffs were essentially freeze dried, study author Frank Maixner explains. “It has an interesting appearance, actually,” he says.

The research team first took a peek under magnification. “Already under a microscope it was clear it was an omnivore diet,” says Maixner, who is a microbiologist at the Institute for Mummies and the Iceman in Bolzano, Italy. Tiny flecks of undigested fibers of plants and meat were visible in the sample, surrounded by a cloudy haze of fat. The team then began their array of tests, which included DNA, proteins, lipids, metabolites, and more.

Ötzi’s Stomach Bacteria Offers Insights on Human Migration

Bacteria found Ötzi’s stomach has shed light on human migration patterns. AFP reported: “When scientists tested the contents of his stomach, they found a bacterium called Helicobacter pylori, an age-old pathogen that has evolved into different strains according to the region of the world in which it is found. “Surprisingly, a strain of bacterium in his gut shares ancestry with an Asian strain,” said the study in the US journal Science. “In contrast to the fact that most modern Europeans harbor a strain ancestral to north African strains.” [Source: Agence France-Presse, January 8, 2016 ]

“If the stomach contents of the Iceman is a good reflection of Europeans 5,300 years ago, the analysis suggests that African migration had not yet resulted in intermingling with the Asian strain of the bacterium. “This one genome has put things into wonderful perspective for us,” said Yoshan Moodley, a researcher at the University of Venda in South Africa. “We can say now that the waves of migration that brought these African Helicobacter pylori into Europe had not occurred, or at least not occurred in earnest, by the time the Iceman was around.” About half the people on the planet have the bacterium in their stomachs. It can cause ulcers or gastrointestinal distress and is typically spread among children when they play in dirt.”

DNA Study of Otzi

Otzi's shoes

In 2012, the first complete genome-sequencing of “Otzi” was revealed and it was done so in such that anyone could have access to the data for their own research.Michel Rose of Reuters wrote: “For the first time since the Copper-age individual was unearthed, his complete genetic profile has been reconstituted, revealing a very modern predisposition for cardiovascular diseases, lactose intolerance, and brown eyes that betray near-Eastern origins. But the full-genome sequencing also opens far more possibilities for researchers around the globe than the 2008 sequencing of his mitochondrial DNA — which is passed down through the mother’s line. [Source: Michel Rose, Reuters, March 2, 2012]

“This is more information than we could probably study in a lifetime,”Angela Graefen, a human genetics researcher at the Eurac Institute for the Mummies and the Iceman in Bolzano, Italy, told Reuter. “That’s why we have made the data public on a special browser so that a specialist in any field can look this up.” “There are millions of genes out there which have yet to be identified. In the future, when we know what a particular gene is for, we can check what it was like 5,000 years ago,” she said. Graefen was one of the principal writers of the study published in the Nature Communications journal.

“Since Otzi’s mummified body was found 20 years ago, speculation about his lifestyle, how he died and even his sexuality have flourished in German, Austrian and Italian newspapers. One sticky rumor was that semen had been found in his anal canal, prompting headlines about his supposed homosexuality. But Graefen set the record straight. “This comes from the fact that seeds have been found in his intestine. The words for plant seeds and semen are actually the same in German,” she laughed. “People still to this day think this urban legend is true. But this is nothing more than a translation fault,” she added.

In 2023, A team of scientists has revisited Ötzi’s genom to determine the individual’s ancestry with greater accuracy, The first analysis of the Iceman’s genome in 2012 was flawed as the sample researchers used was contaminated with modern DNA. For the research in 2012 recent work, the team sequenced Ötzi’s genome from two samples from the mummy’s left iliac bone and the surrounding tissue. By the team’s measure, the new high-coverage genome has 10 times less contamination than the previously published sequence. Their findings were published in Cell Genomics. [Source: Isaac Schultz, Gizmodo, August 16, 2023]

“We were very surprised to find no traces of Eastern European Steppe Herders in the most recent analysis of the Iceman genome; the proportion of hunter-gatherer genes in Ötzi’s genome is also very low,” said study co-author Johannes Krause, the head of archaeogenetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, in an institute release. “Genetically, his ancestors seem to have arrived directly from Anatolia without mixing with hunter gatherer groups.”

Otzi’s Blood: the World's Oldest

Otzi blood cells

After some red blood cells were found around, it was determined that Otzi’s blood is the world's oldest. The BBC reported: “Researchers studying Oetzi have found red blood cells around his wounds. Blood cells tend to degrade quickly, and earlier scans for blood within Oetzi's body turned up nothing. Now a study in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface shows that Oetzi's remarkable preservation extends even to the blood he shed shortly before dying. The find represents by far the oldest red blood cells ever observed. [Source: BBC, 2 May 2012]

An earlier study by Prof Albert Zink and his colleagues at the Eurac Institute for Mummies, published in the Lancet, showed that a wound on Oetzi's hand contained haemoglobin, a protein found in blood - but it had long been presumed that red blood cells' delicate nature would have precluded their preservation. Prof Albert Zink and his colleagues collaborated with researchers at the Center for Smart Interfaces at the University of Darmstadt in Germany to apply what is known as atomic force microscopy to thin slices of tissue taken from an area surrounding the arrow wound.

“The technique works using a tiny metal tip with a point just a few atoms across, dragged along the surface of a sample. The tip's movement is tracked, and results in a 3-D map at extraordinary resolution. The team found that the sample from Oetzi contained structures with a tell-tale "doughnut" shape, just as red blood cells have. To ensure the structures were preserved cells and not contamination of some kind, they confirmed the find using a laser-based technique called Raman spectroscopy - those results also indicated the presence of haemoglobin and the clot-associated protein fibrin. That, Prof Zink explained, seems to solve one of the elements of the murder mystery. "Because fibrin is present in fresh wounds and then degrades, the theory that Oetzi died some days after he had been injured by the arrow, as had once been mooted, can no longer be upheld," he said.

Image Sources: Otzi Museum, stomach contents from Frank Maixner, Eurac Research, Institute for Mummy Studies

Text Sources: National Geographic, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Nature, Scientific American. Live Science, Discover magazine, Discovery News, The Times of London, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, Time, BBC, The Guardian, Reuters, AP, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides and various books and other publications.

Last updated May 2024