Who Killed the Iceman

Who Killed the Iceman?

Little did a pair of hikers know in 1991 that they would literally stumble upon one of the greatest scientific enigmas of the 20^th century.

In September 1991, German hikers Helmut and Ericka Simon were enjoying a hike in the Otzal region of the Alps While hiking through Tisenjoch Pass, Mr. Simon spotted a human body lying in the snow. "My husband said, ‘Look what’s lying there’, and I said ‘Oh, it’s a body’. Then my husband took a photograph, just one, the last we had left in the camera. We thought that it was a mountain climber or a skier who had an accident perhaps 10 years previously".

What they had chanced upon was one of the most extraordinary finds in modern archeology. A mummy from the Stone Age…preserved under a sheet of ice for over five- thousand years. And it appears that he may have been murdered.

Named after the region of the Alps in which he was found, Otzi (rhymes with "tootsie") was an enigma from the moment he was found. Was he a mountaineer or skier who had become stranded and died from exposure? Was he just another Alpine fatality? Local authorities evaluated the scene, and since weather delayed the arrival of the forensics team, ski poles, ice picks and a jackhammer were used to free the body and artifacts found with the remains. Only when an archeologist from the University of Innsbruck saw the copper ax was the truth realized. Archeologist Dr. Konrad Spindler realized that the copper ax was four-thousand years old…a relic of the Neolithic age. The Neolithic era was the age when stone tools began to give way to metal tools. It was also the time when agriculture was augmenting the hunting-and-gathering lifestyle typical of the time. Before Otzi was found, archeologists had few items to reconstruct what life may have been like four thousand years ago however, the glacier’s freezing temperature preserved much of Otzi’s tools and clothing, not to mention Otzi himself. Although some of the artifacts were destroyed during the recovery of Otzi, what has been recovered has provided a wealth of knowledge about Neolithic man.

The origins of the history of the European Neolithic age are closely connected to post-glacial climate and forest development. The increasing temperature resulting from glacial recession cause a remarkable change in the local flora and fauna therefore, the Mediterranean zone became the center of the first cultural modifications leading from the previous hunter-and-food-gatherers to the earliest farmers. By 5000 BC, agriculture was the mainstay of European life cereals, along with beans, peas and lentils were cultivated. While agriculture and livestock provided the basic nutrition, hunting wild animals provided additional protein to the diet, furs for clothing and bones for tools.

People had settled into small villages, with four to eight houses forming a village. One family usually lived in each house. A few fields were worked, and animals were taken to the meadows to graze. Thought most Neolithic societies were self-sufficient, luxury items such as shells of the Mediterranean mussel, flint and obsidian were traded. Amber was a highly prized commodity it appeared to be imbued with magical power because of its electrical properties.

Today, Otzi’s remains are brown and skeletal. He is about 5 feet 2 inches tall and weighs barely 30 pounds. His home today is a refrigerated chamber in the South Tyrol Museum of Archeology in Bolanzo, Italy. Initial investigations had revealed that in life, Otzi was about 5 feet, 2.5 inches tall, in his mid-forties, and probably had a beard. Equipment found with his remains included a flint dagger, a yew longbow, medicinal plants, clothing made of deer and goat hide, a bearskin hat, a copper axe, dried food and a fire-making kit. "Otzi was extremely well equipped, each object fashioned from the material best suited to its purpose," state Otzi scientists. "The items are a testament to how intimately his people knew the rocks, fungi, plants and animals in their immediate surroundings."

During the initial exam, scientists thought that Otzi was a poor shepherd that had gotten lost and suffered a lonely death high in the mountains now, after 12 years of careful research, scientists now speculate that he was the Stone Age equivalent of a modern hi-tech trooper, equipped with complex weapons and survival gear.

The study of Otzi’s accouterments has changed our concepts of the Neolithic world. The feathers of his arrows showed that Neolithic people understood the principles that made an arrow fly more accurately. Otzi carried embers wrapped in maple leaves and placed in a birch-bark container, signifying that people of his age knew how to transport fire. Evaluation of his copper axe have caused scientist to totally revise their ideas of when the smelting of copper first appeared in the Alpine region. Until Otzi, little was known about the clothing that Neolithic people wore. Otzi’s clothing included shoes made of leather and woven plant fibers, which he stuffed with grass for insulation from the cold.

Dr. Klaus Oeggl from the Institute of Botany in Innsbruck evaluated material from Otzi’s colon and found remnants of bread made from einkorn, a primitive variety of wheat. This implied that Otzi came from a society from which agriculture was just starting. He also found pollen from the hop hornbeam. He determined that Otzi must have come from a village on the Italian side of the Tisenjoch Pass, because analysis of sediment layers showed that hop hornbeam did not grow on the Austrian side of the pass.

So how did Otzi come to die 10,000 feet up in the Alps? I previously stated that it was originally thought that Otzi might have died from exposure however, in 2001, a team of scientists found a stone arrowhead buried deep in Otzi’s left shoulder. Otzi had been shot…in the back.

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Otzi had also been found apparently clutching a dagger in his right hand. Microscopic examination of Otzi’s right hand showed a cut just below the index finger about 3.5 centimeters long. This cut went to a depth of 5 or 6 millimeters. Discoloration along the wound edge suggested that the laceration was made while Otzi’s blood still flowed, not while the body was being extracted. Close-up x-rays of the hand show two bone lesions…one under the cut on this hand and one on the right wrist. These bone lesions are consistent with injuries one may suffer while fending off an attacker’s blade. Endoscopic examination of Otzi’s chest cavity to determine if arteries and veins had been severed is pending if arteries had been lacerated, Otzi may have died shortly after the arrow hit him. If veins were lacerated, he may have stayed alive much longer. If no vessels were damaged, or if his lung was damaged, he may have survived for several days to a week or more…at that point, infection would have become the major issue.

Microscopic blood traces on Otzi’s cloak and weapons have revealed four different sequences of human DNA, suggesting that Otzi was killed by one or more assailants in a fight. "None of these samples match Otzi’s DNA", states biologist Thomas Loy of the University of Queensland. Scientists believe that Otzi managed to flee up the mountain after a battle, and then collapsed. If he had been killed in a battle near the site he was found, the killer would have probably taken the valuable axe and other artifacts.

Of course, no one will ever determine who attacked Otzi, but researchers have determined that the arrowhead in his shoulder is consistent with weapons designed by tribe whom lived on the southern Alps in northern Italy.

The discovery of Otzi’s body and equipment has redefined our concept of how Neolithic people lived. With further study, and perhaps new discoveries, new chapters will be added to the lives of Neolithic people.