Photo Credits: OPED. THIRD LEAD
When police heard about the frozen corpse up in the Alps in September 1991, they opened a criminal probe. Murder it was, but the crime was rather old -- and the ultimate cold case. The dead man, found by hikers 25 years ago this week a snowball's throw from the Austrian-Italian border and put in a wooden coffin at a nearby police station, turned out to have died more than 5,000 years ago.
Mummified in the ice, "Oetzi", as he was later nicknamed, was a sensation, providing invaluable scientific insights that a quarter of a century later show no sign of abating. "The iceman is without doubt one of the most outstanding mummy discoveries in the history of mankind," said Angelika Fleckinger, director of the museum in Bolzano, Italy, where the mummy is on display.
To put it into perspective, when Oetzi died around 3,350-3,100 BC, Stonehenge in England and the first Egyptian pyramids were still hundreds of years from being built. He lived during the Late Neolithic or Copper Age when mineral extraction and copper smelting, which spread to Europe from the Near East, was fundamentally transforming human society. Perhaps the resulting upheaval explains his still mysterious death. That he came to a sticky end was confirmed by the arrowhead lodged in his shoulder, only found in 2001, showing he had been shot from behind.
His untimely demise high in the mountains meant for scientists that he was incredibly well-preserved, allowing detailed studies. Unlike other ancient mummies, Oetzi is "damp", meaning there is still humidity in his cells and his body is untouched by funeral rites. Egyptian specimens are generally without brains and other organs. The findings include that Oetzi was lactose intolerant and genetically predisposition to heart disease, as shown by his hardened arteries, something thought of before as a modern phenomenon. The 30 types of pollen in his intestines and the isotopic composition of his tooth enamel suggest he lived just south of the Alps. He was from a genetic subgroup now extremely rare in Europe but relatively common in Corsica and Sardinia, meaning that people there and Oetzi have common ancestors.
Albert Zink, director at the EURAC Institute for Mummies and the Iceman in Bolzano, said that studying the bacteria in his stomach could help advances in modern medicine. For instance Oetzi's intestine contains H. pylori, a bacteria present in 50 percent of humans' guts today and which can lead to stomach ulcers or even cancer. A major mummy congress began in Bolzano revealing new findings including on the bacteria in Oetzi's stomach and the circumstances surrounding his death. And one upside to global warming is that more treasures may be discovered, like the snowshoe found nearby that was recently revealed to be 500 years older even than Oetzi. "People are more aware now that there could be more mummies in the mountains, and the melting of the glaciers makes us hope or maybe believe there could be more," Zink said.
