Ötzi the Iceman

In 1991, two German tourists stumbled upon Europe’s oldest known natural human mummy on the border between Italy and Austria. Nicknamed Ötzi after the Ötztal Alps where he was found, he lived some 5,300 years ago in the Copper Age. With his extraordinarily preserved body and array of artefacts, he has provided unique insights into some of the mysteries of our collective past. But just what is it that we have learned from Ötzi? What sort of life – and death – did he have? And what more might he have yet to tell us? This is a Short History Of Ötzi the Iceman. A Noiser podcast production. Hosted by John Hopkins. With thanks to Albert Zink, Director of the Bavarian State Collection for Anthropology, and previously Head of the Institute for Mummy Studies at Eurac Research in Bolzano, Italy. Written by Dan Smith | Produced by Kate Simants | Production Assistant: Chris McDonald | Exec produced by Katrina Hughes | Sound supervisor: Matt Peaty | Sound design by Oliver Sanders | Assembly edit by Dorry Macaulay | Compositions by Oliver Baines, Dorry Macaulay, Tom Pink | Mix & mastering: Cody Reynolds-Shaw | Fact Check: Sean Coleman Unlock the next two episodes of Short History Of… right now by subscribing to Noiser+. You’ll also get ad-free listening and early access to shows across the Noiser podcast network, including Real Survival Stories and Sherlock Holmes Short Stories. Just click the subscription banner at the top of the feed, or head to www.noiser.com/subscriptions to get started. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• 1:02Speaker 02

  It's Thursday, the 19th of September, 1991. A bright, sunny afternoon in the Erzstal Alps mountain range on the border between Italy and Austria.

• 1:14Speaker 02

  Without slowing her pace, a German woman in her early 50s, Erika Simon, takes a swig from her bottle of water before passing it to her husband, Helmut.

• 1:25Speaker 02

  Their hiking boots crunch against the rocky path as they move steadily along the ridge.

• 1:31Speaker 02

  3,200 meters above sea level, the couple take in deep lungfuls of thin air, the wind whistling about them. After some brief discussion, they decide to come off the main marked footpath in favor of what they believe is a shortcut. The mountains here are still capped with snow, and they now pass a gully filled with meltwater sparkling in the light.

• 1:57Speaker 02

  Erika's eye is drawn to a curious object, something brown and partly submerged. At first, she wonders if it's something left behind by another hiker. But as they get closer, she can see this is no abandoned detritus. With each footstep, her eyes widen until she lets out a gasp.

• 2:18Speaker 02

  What she has seen is, in fact, a human being.

• 2:25Speaker 02

  The back of its head, its shoulders, and part of its back are clearly visible, and the left arm is stretched out, with the right half submerged to the side.

• 2:35Speaker 02

  It is as if this desperately emaciated person is attempting to climb clear of the shimmering gully. Or at least, they had been trying. Because it is also immediately obvious that whoever it is, whether man or woman, they have been dead for some time.

• 2:55Speaker 02

  Setting down their backpacks for a moment, the couple go a little closer. As Erika weighs the possibilities of what could have happened here, Helmut digs his camera from his pack, carefully lining up a few shots of the gruesome scene.

• 3:11Speaker 02

  When they have gathered themselves, they move on from the gully, carrying on their descent. It is not long before they arrive at a mountain refuge. There, they tell the landlord, a man named Markus Pierpalmer, about their grisly find.

• 3:28Speaker 02

  He doesn't waste any time. Aware that the body lies on the international border, Pierpalmer places calls to the local police in both Italy and Austria to report the death.

• 3:39Speaker 02

  It's in the hands of the authorities now, but even so, he can't resist the temptation to go with a colleague to take a look for himself.

• 3:49Speaker 02

  A mysterious death such as this is always going to provoke curiosity. Everybody knows that these peaks have claimed the lives of plenty of ill-starred climbers, not to mention a good number of others long ago in the war. Yet, as Erika sits unlacing her boots and running through the events of the day, neither she nor anyone else here has the slightest clue about the magnitude of their discovery. Because this is not the body of some recent unfortunate, but the mummified remains of a man who lived thousands of years ago. And his reemergence into the world is about to open an unprecedented window onto the ancient past.

• 4:39Speaker 02

  What these two German tourists had stumbled upon by chance would soon be confirmed as Europe's oldest known natural mummy.

• 4:50Speaker 02

  Nicknamed Urtzi, after the Erzstal Alps where he was found, he lived some 5,300 years ago, in the Copper Age. With his extraordinary-preserved body and array of artifacts, he has provided unique insights into some of the mysteries of our collective past.

• 5:12Speaker 02

  But just what is it that we have learned from Urtzi? What sort of life and death did he have? And what more might he have yet to tell us?

• 5:23Speaker 02

  I'm John Hopkins. From the Noiser Podcast Network, this is A Short History of Urtzi the Iceman.

• 5:43Speaker 02

  Simply put, a mummy is any creature whose body, including skin, internal organs, and soft tissues, remains well-preserved after death rather than simply rotting away.

• 5:57Speaker 02

  The Egyptians famously perfected mummification by following a strict series of processes, including drying corpses with salt and applying various oils and resins to act as chemical preservatives. A natural mummy, like Urtzi, by contrast, is preserved by environmental conditions rather than human intervention. Specifically, Urtzi's body dried out after death and was then entrapped in a very stable, cold atmosphere that prevented normal decomposition.

• 6:28Speaker 02

  Though older mummies have been found in other parts of the world, the fact that he was preserved along with clothes and personal possessions makes him a uniquely rich source of data for historians.

• 6:42Speaker 02

  When Pierpalmer and his colleague from the refuge make their way to the scene of discovery, they find a number of intriguing artifacts in the vicinity, including pieces of wood, hair, string, and strips of hide. The following day, Pierpalmer returns, this time with a contingent from the Austrian police.

• 7:03Speaker 02

  Albert Zink is the director of the Bavarian State Collection for Anthropology and was previously head of the Institute for Mummy Studies at AERAC Research in Bolzano, Italy. He has spent many years investigating Urtzi, his life, and his scientific legacy.

• 7:18Speaker 03

  So there was a forensic doctor coming to the site, and he was just saying, "Well, I only can say this person died some time ago." And then they were looking for a passport even or for a wedding ring. Because usually this helps to get an idea about the person, but they couldn't find anything. So he said then, "Oh, well, I cannot say anything about his identity." And they were a bit wondering because the equipment looked a bit ancient, but then we're not really understanding that this was a very old mummy.

• 7:52Speaker 02

  The team get started extracting the body from the ice, but it's heavy-going. The gully itself is a formidable space to navigate, some 130 feet long, up to 10 feet deep, and 20 or so feet wide. On top of that, the weather is awful, and they have to fight through deep meltwater just to get close.

• 8:12Speaker 02

  Still unaware of just how precious their quarry is, once they're in position, they set about trying to dislodge the discovery with a pneumatic drill. In the process, they manage to damage one of the corpse's delicate hips.

• 8:26Speaker 02

  When the drill runs out of power, the rescue attempt is abandoned for the day. It's been a frustrating expedition, although the team does at least manage to extract one important artifact, an axe made of wood and copper.

• 8:42Speaker 02

  Meanwhile, word is spreading. Although no one yet has a firm grasp on the circumstances of the death, the rumors claim that the victim was subject to some terrible ordeal before being murdered. In a bid to get to the truth, a criminal inquiry is launched.

• 9:01Speaker 02

  The next day, Saturday the 21st of September, Pier Palmer is back again, this time with plastic sheeting. He uses it to cover the body, protecting it both from the climactic conditions of strong winds, fresh snow and plummeting temperatures, as well as the prying eyes of sightseers. It just so happens that the legendary climber Reinhold Messner is in the area.

• 9:27Speaker 02

  A local boy from the Italian South Tyrol region, Messner was both the first person to solo climb Mount Everest and the first to climb all the world's 14 peaks above 8,000 meters. A feat achieved astonishingly without using supplementary oxygen.

• 9:44Speaker 02

  With him is Hans Kamelander, another South Tyrolean mountaineer who has accompanied Messner on some of his most challenging climbs. Alerted to the events unfolding in the mountains, the pair now make their way to the gully, stooping at its edge to get a look at the scene. Messner takes in the state of the body and inspects some of the artifacts. The corpse appears to be wearing leather leggings and there is a primitive-looking shoe on his right foot.

• 10:13Speaker 02

  He and Kamelander make their own efforts to free the man using a ski stick to chip away at the ice before trying out a piece of wood found lying nearby. Wood, it will later transpire, that comes from the frame of the corpse's own backpack. But it is all to no avail. Messner also spots what appears to be the upper section of a longbow stuck in the ice. Certainly not something many modern climbers would carry.

• 10:41Speaker 02

  Though the age of the corpse and how long he has been out here remain a mystery for now, Messner is among the first to think it might be a very long time indeed.

• 10:51Speaker 03

  He at least had an idea, based on his belongings and his equipment, that he said this must be something that's maybe some thousand years old. So he was assuming that this could be something much older.

• 11:04Speaker 02

  On Sunday, three days after the initial find, the local authorities carry out more work to prepare the mummy for extraction. Yet, as the situation is still being treated as an unexplained death rather than a matter of great historical importance, there are no archaeologists or similar specialists on site. Even so, the buzz around the unusual job at hand is hard to miss.

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• 12:41Speaker 02

  It is lunchtime on Monday the 23rd of September. Up here in the mountains, it is bitingly cold with fresh snow lying heaped on top of more compacted ice.

• 12:53Speaker 02

  Reiner Hen, a distinguished-looking man in his 60s from Austria's Innsbruck University Institute of Forensic Medicine, leads a small team towards the scene. What little headway had been made in starting to free up the body yesterday has been undone by a sub-zero night. The mummy is at risk of being refrozen back into the ice.

• 13:18Speaker 02

  Still, as the group arrive, there is a sense of optimism and enthusiasm, with the experts excited at the challenge before them. They tramp around the gully edge, setting up cameras to record the removal of the cadaver. The equipment they're brought to break up the ice is no more refined than anything else hitherto used in the rescue attempts. But as they chisel away with a combination of ice picks and ski poles, they start to grind down the ice inch by painstaking inch.

• 13:50Speaker 02

  After some intensive work, Hen can see a little movement around the body and calls to the team to pause. Downing their tools, they take up positions and delicately begin raising the corpse out of the gully.

• 14:06Speaker 02

  Bit by bit, it comes loose and soon they're laying it down, ready to be transported to safety.

• 14:13Speaker 02

  Hen notes that the body does not have a layer of waxy residue known as adipocere that he would normally expect to see with mummified glacial bodies. This indicates to him that the corpse was preserved by a process of rapid drying or desiccation, sometime in the past before being frozen in ice.

• 14:35Speaker 02

  After a few initial observations, Hen has the job of transferring the mummy, which weighs no more than a toddler despite its size, into the body bag that he has brought with him.

• 14:46Speaker 02

  Now he brings together some of the artifacts that have been extracted. To begin with, it's mostly more string and pieces of animal hide. But then a colleague passes him a dagger.

• 14:59Speaker 02

  The others crowd in, a spark of delight passing through them as he shows it around. It's small, just five inches long with a short flint blade and a handle of ash wood. Neither Hen nor anyone else has ever seen anything like it so well-preserved.

• 15:18Speaker 02

  The team then turn their attention to dislodging the longbow from the ice. But they fail to make much headway and instead snap it off and pack a sample in with the other exhibits from the scene.

• 15:33Speaker 02

  Now the group carry the body bag a short distance to an elevated staging post where soon the distinctive wump of a helicopter's rotor blades slice through the alpine calm.

• 15:44Speaker 02

  Hen braces himself against the wind as it lands, protective of his delicate cargo. The team maneuvers the body inside the aircraft, with Hen taking a seat alongside. Then the helicopter engine roars back into life and they take off on the short journey to the nearby town of Vent in Austria.

• 16:08Speaker 02

  When they have touched down, Hen oversees the transfer of the mummy into a wooden coffin, which is in turn placed in a hearse and driven to the Institute of Forensic Medicine around 60 miles away. The dead man might not have had much dignity in death up to now, but it is not too late to accord him some respect.

• 16:28Speaker 03

  They brought the mummy, as they do it with other dead people, to the forensic institute at the University of Innsbruck. They investigated the body. They couldn't find anything to tell them what had happened and how old he actually is or from what time period he is. And they were close actually to decide to, let's say, cremate the mummy because they said it's maybe somebody who died. We have no missing persons who are put bit to this body. And actually then finally and luckily to all of us, they decided to get in contact with the Institute of Archaeology because they said maybe somebody should have a local who is an expert in this area.

• 17:08Speaker 02

  The following day, Konrad Spindler, a leading archaeologist from the University of Innsbruck, is brought in to give his opinion. It does not take him long to realize that this is a discovery quite out of the ordinary. He dates the corpse as being at least 4,000 years old. No mummy like this, complete with such an assortment of well-preserved goods and clothing, has ever been found before.

• 17:37Speaker 02

  Yet after all these millennia in stasis, the mummy has all but thawed, and time is already taking its toll.

• 17:45Speaker 03

  They then soon realized that the body starts to decompose, or there was at least some mold formation starting on the body because he was the whole time in this high mountain area with low oxygen and cold temperatures. So he was very well protected and preserved. And this then has changed, and you could immediately see the maybe the starting of the decomposition process.

• 18:10Speaker 02

  Removed from the protective, sub-zero environment, the mummy needs artificial help to maintain his state of preservation. After being wrapped in a sterile operating gown, he is stored at a constant temperature of minus six degrees Celsius beneath a layer of crushed ice made from sterilized water, an atmosphere that replicates the conditions on the icy glacier where he was found as closely as possible.

• 18:35Speaker 02

  He is then subjected to carbon dating, a technique that can accurately assess the age of organic matter by measuring the decay of radioactive carbon-14. About 99% of all the carbon on Earth takes the form of carbon-12, which has six neutrons and six protons. Carbon-14, on the other hand, has eight neutrons, which makes it a great deal less stable. All living organisms absorb both forms of carbon until they die. After that, carbon-12 remains stable and does not decay, while carbon-14 decays at a known rate.

• 19:15Speaker 02

  By comparing these variables, it is possible to date organic materials up to an age of about 50,000 years. The results of these early tests are astonishing. They show that the man, who is now a mummy, lived somewhere between 3,350 and 3,100 B.C., about the same time that the first great European civilization, the Minoan culture, was emerging in Crete and centuries before the Egyptians began building their pyramids or anyone had thought about dragging the vast stones to construct Stonehenge in England.

• 19:54Speaker 02

  In fact, the remains date from the Chalcolithic, or Copper Age, a transitional period between the Neolithic, or Late Stone Age, and the Bronze Age.

• 20:06Speaker 02

  Around this time, humans were beginning to practice copper smelting, an innovation that was used to produce tools and forms of ornamentation. While much of life remained rooted in agriculture, the ability to work metal had profound effects on society. The use of copper triggered a great increase in trade and made minerals and mining a lucrative new business. More complex social structures began to emerge with more defined hierarchies. For most of the Stone Age, life had been primarily about subsistence, but increasingly, in the Copper Age, it becomes possible to accumulate wealth, goods, and land, creating a gap between rich and poor.

• 20:50Speaker 02

  It's a phenomenon evident not only in Europe, but in Africa, Asia, and the Americas too. It is to this tumultuous period of human history that the mummy belongs.

• 21:02Speaker 02

  It is arguably only luck that brings him now to light, at a time when archaeological and scientific technologies are sufficiently advanced to allow his preservation to continue.

• 21:13Speaker 03

  This is a quite exceptional finding that the mummy remained there for over 5,000 years. It's really very particular. So the finding site is about 3,210 meters, so about 10,000 feet. And it was in an area where there used to be a glacier. Today, there is no more real glacier. There is more like an ice patch. But the body remained in a kind of groove that was formed there. And this is most likely the reason that the body was not transported away.

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  Sniffing a good story, the world's media descend upon the area, besieging scientists in the quest for more information. Ever eager to play up the human angle of the saga, they set about trying to give the mummy a nickname that captures the public's imagination. Some refer to him simply as "the man in the ice", others as "the man from Tizenyok" or "Hauslabyok", referencing the local mountain passes. Someone else attempts something more scientific sounding with "Homo Tyrolensis", "Tyrolean man". But in late September, an Austrian newspaper tries out something new. Referencing the Örtstal Alps themselves,

• 24:28Speaker 02

  they call the Ice Mummy Örtzi, and it sticks.

• 24:35Speaker 02

  Meanwhile, an intriguing subplot is playing out. Örtzi has been discovered on the border between Austria and Italy. So which nation should have jurisdiction over him? The border is defined by an agreement between the two nations dating to 1919, just after the First World War. But this is a remote, inaccessible region, and the precise line is difficult to establish. Now, new tests are carried out which confirm Örtzi was discovered just under 100 meters into the Italian province of South Tyrol. The news comes as a disappointment to the Austrians. Those studying him at Innsbruck are especially concerned since South Tyrol lacks a university or any other research institute

• 25:19Speaker 02

  capable of looking after the mummy. So the decision is taken to allow him to remain in Austria for now on the understanding that he will be transferred to Italian custody when suitable arrangements can be made. It is clear that the study of Örtzi and his belongings will be complex and interdisciplinary. Among those competing to get their hands on the find are experts in a wide variety of fields, from forensics to anthropology, archaeology to DNA analysis, radiology to paleopathology. A good many samples are taken and stored for the future in anticipation of scientific methods still yet undeveloped. Down to the tiniest pollen grain, secreted in Örtzi's stomach,

• 26:03Speaker 02

  every element of the find offers hope of brand-new insights into the ancient past.

• 26:11Speaker 02

  With the scientific treasure trove drawing practitioners from across the globe, it's inevitable that friction emerges between competing interests.

• 26:19Speaker 03

  They maybe begin, and there were some kind of tensions because the people who were involved, they tried to keep the investigations among them mainly. Or they involved maybe their friends or their colleagues they knew well, but they were quite, we would say, selective. Because for them, it was also a big thing for their own careers now because such a unique find, and everybody in the world was jealous.

• 26:46Speaker 02

  Nonetheless, through forensic examination, including scans, x-rays, and analysis of his internal organs, an image of Ertzi begins to coalesce. Not just of his mummified remains, but of who he once was as a living, breathing human.

• 27:03Speaker 03

  With some typical skeletal markers, you can understand the age of a person. It's not precise, but they came up with an estimate about forty to fifty years, which is still valid. There was a radiologist involved. They did the first radiological pictures. They did also then a first CT scan at the University of Innsbruck, where they could look inside the body. They found things like that he had some broken ribs that were well-healed.

• 27:28Speaker 02

  It is found that Ertzi was in his mid-forties, a decent age for his time, though by no means exceptionally old. He was about five feet, two inches tall, and in life weighed little more than seven and a half stone. His eyes were brown and his hair long, dark and wavy, worn loose. He likely had some semblance of a beard, too. Although broadly fit, there is evidence of imperfect health. Little surprise in someone of his age in this period. Along with the healed ribs, he has a fracture to his nasal bone and a cyst on his toe that is perhaps indicative of frostbite. His joints show signs of wear and tear, and there is some hardening of his arteries.

• 28:11Speaker 02

  His dental health is in a fairly sorry state, too. As well as being decayed, his teeth are significantly eroded, probably from consuming stone ground wheat containing residual fragments of grit. Damage to his fingernails further indicates several bouts of ill health that strained his immune system in the months before his death.

• 28:34Speaker 03

  He had also some things like intestinal problems. He had gallbladder stones. We even detected. He had stomach pathogen in his stomach that is called Helicobacter pylori, which is a very common pathogen also today that lives in the stomach. In most of the people, it's assumed that fifty percent of the whole worldwide population has this in the stomach. And in maybe ten percent, you can develop some diseases like stomach ulcer or even stomach cancer or you can at least gastritis, at least get problems.

• 29:07Speaker 02

  His possessions also begin to yield their own secrets.

• 29:12Speaker 02

  His axe. Its blade beautifully crafted from copper with traces of silver and arsenic is the world's only completely preserved copper age axe of its type. Even in Ertzi's own lifetime, it would have been a highly valued item, serving as both a practical tool and a status symbol. The bottom section of his longbow is recovered several months after the top was snapped free, and the whole artifact is found to measure six or seven inches longer than Ertzi was tall. A quiver, meanwhile, is discovered in a crack in the gully containing a number of arrows. With shafts of various woods, arrowheads crafted from flint and flights made from feathers stuck together with birch tar and bound with nettle fibers,

• 29:56Speaker 02

  many of the arrows were unfinished when their owner met his end.

• 30:02Speaker 02

  Some show signs of being made by a right-handed person and others by a left-hander. This suggests that Ertzi was to some extent involved in trading.

• 30:13Speaker 02

  Additionally, a lump of what is called "true tinder fungus" is found in a container, something he likely used as a reliable fire lighter. All that remains of his backpack is a six-foot hazel rod bent into a U shape with two wooden strips attached across its width. The evidence, however, suggests a hide sack was once attached to it, in which Ertzi would have kept more of his belongings. Then there is his uniquely complete set of clothing, crafted from the hides of sheep, goats, cow, deer, and bear.

• 30:47Speaker 03

  So he had a kind of trousers made out of fur. He had a coat. He had a cap made out of bear skin. He had a kind of grass mat that he could maybe use to cover himself. He had shoes that were stuffed with dried grass. And he had a lot of little tools also to make fire, also to repair his clothing. And he also had a wooden kind of frug sack that he maybe was carrying things. So and he had some birch containers, so little boxes.

• 31:19Speaker 02

  While Ertzi and his belongings are scrutinized in Innsbruck, back at the gully where he was found, archaeologists begin carrying out thorough surveys. They begin in October 1991, not long after the discovery, but pause when unfavorable weather sets in and resume the following summer. Out here, they find still more pieces of kit, as well as hair, fragments of skin and muscle, and even a fingernail. They suggest that Ertzi's possessions were likely laid out around him after death in discreet cavities and on stony platforms, possibly even as some kind of funerial ritual.

• 31:57Speaker 02

  A consensus grows that the gully was likely free of ice when he died, probably in late spring. His body may well then have lain in meltwater for some time, during which his outer layer of skin peeled away. Once the meltwater drained, the body was left to dehydrate naturally before the snows came and covered him. Eventually, he became embedded in ice and stayed there thawing and refreezing several times over thousands of years.

• 32:28Speaker 02

  There is evidence that, at the time of his death, there were a number of small settlements in the area. Although it is not possible to pinpoint the exact place he called home, it is likely to have been one of those communities south of the Erzstal Alps. Having identified much about where and when he lived, researchers are also interested in the sort of lifestyle he had.

• 32:50Speaker 03

  What you also could see from the mummy and from the muscles that are preserved, that he has a very well-trained body. And also from his degenerations, especially of the knees, of the hip joints, of the ankles, of the lower back. It's quite typical for somebody who's really walking a lot and walking also in this alpine environment. This makes perfectly sense. Interestingly, he has almost no degeneration of his upper body, of the shoulder joints, of the elbows. So he most likely really had a profession or job where he used to walk a lot.

• 33:28Speaker 02

  The lack of upper body degeneration seems to rule out a life spent in very physical manual labor, such as animal herding or copper smelting. But exactly what role he did play in his society remains an enigma.

• 33:42Speaker 03

  So he was somebody who's trading things. He was maybe going from one village to the next. There was also speculation that he was a kind of had a higher social rank because of his copper axe, for example, that for sure had a very high value at the time because it was quite a big effort to melt the copper, to prepare such an ice blade. So for sure, not everyone had this blade. So maybe he had a somehow higher social status, but it's difficult to tell whether he was really a leader or was just in an upper social group.

• 34:14Speaker 02

  Another mystery needing a solution is the considerable collection of tattoos discovered across his body. There are sixty-one in total in nineteen distinct groups. Most are single lines, each a little less than an inch in length, but there are also two crosses. Several groups are located on his back and most of the rest on his lower legs and feet. Together, they represent the earliest known evidence of human tattooing, created by the insertion of soot or charcoal pigment into punctures or small incisions in the skin.

• 34:50Speaker 02

  Yet, as none of them can be described as figurative, investigators consider the idea that they have some medical significance.

• 34:58Speaker 03

  And there were also, in the first years, expert of Chinese medicine involved because they found that some of the tattoos are placed at locations where you would also use them for acupuncture treatments. So for example, it's quite obvious that most of the tattoos are in a location where his body had some health issues. He had a lot of tattoos in his lower back where it is spine degeneration. He had tattoos on his knees, on his ankles, everywhere. We maybe from time to time at least suffered some pain. So they concluded maybe this could be a kind of treatment like you do in acupuncture. And it makes also sense in a way that it really looks like tattoos that were made or applied to somehow deal with the pain or the health problems he had.

• 35:44Speaker 02

  It is another example of Ertzi rewriting our understanding of history. Acupuncture evolved in China, and though the earliest books related to its use date to around the first century B.C., the practice is believed to predate that by many centuries. Ertzi's tattoos, though, seem to show use of a very similar style of medical treatment thousands of miles to the west, significantly before the existence of the first written texts on this method.

• 36:15Speaker 02

  In 1998, Ertzi at last makes the short hop from Austria to Italy under police guard to a grand new home. The South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology has been specially built for the purpose and is located in the province's main city, Bolzano.

• 36:33Speaker 03

  It was actually a bank building, but they transformed it in a way that the mummy could stay there. And then they also created a special unit for the conservation of the iceman, the special cooling chamber, which was then designed to recreate a bit the situation he was found or he was preserved over time.

• 36:52Speaker 02

  Here, hundreds of scientists continue to work on the discovery, with a management team constantly fielding ever more requests to access samples. Each year sees a new flurry of academic papers detailing new findings and proposing new theories about Ertzi's life and the copper age world in general. Then, in 2001, an x-ray leads to an astonishing discovery.

• 37:18Speaker 02

  Virtually from the moment he was found, everyone has wanted to know how Ertzi died. The smart money has been on him having perished as a result of exposure, that he was maybe walking up in the mountains when exhaustion overtook him or the weather suddenly took a turn for the worse. Whatever the reason, he must have collapsed and then frozen to death. But now, radiologist Paul Gostner makes an astonishing discovery. As he surveys a set of scan results, he spots something strange around Ertzi's left shoulder, something that leads to a complete rethink of Ertzi's last days and hours.

• 38:08Speaker 02

  It is late spring, around 5,000 years ago. The man who will one day be known across the world as Ötzi, the Iceman, sits on the ground in a valley about 4,000 feet above sea level, a breeze gently whistling through.

• 38:25Speaker 02

  Grimacing, he applies a treatment of bog moss to a deep cut between the thumb and index finger on his right hand. In the sky above, a flight of jackdaws circle and squawk.

• 38:39Speaker 02

  He is thirsty and his limbs ache. His discomfort is partly down to a rapid descent from a forest area higher up in the mountains, but mostly because of the fight he has just escaped.

• 38:54Speaker 02

  A brutal assault by either one or several assailants that has left him with his injured hand. For now, he is safe, but who knows if and when his pursuers might catch up with him.

• 39:06Speaker 02

  He needs to keep on the move, but it's equally important to keep his energy up.

• 39:12Speaker 02

  Heaving himself to his feet, he picks his way down a rocky slope, ignoring the stinging of his wound as best he can.

• 39:21Speaker 02

  Arriving at a nearby stream, he kneels and sets his pack on the ground before drawing close to the water and taking a hearty gulp. After quenching his parched throat, he cools himself by splashing his face.

• 39:35Speaker 02

  Then he retrieves a parcel of food bound up in moss from his pack. He unwraps it and takes a handful of ibex meat and wheat grains, chewing carefully to avoid the most painful of his teeth.

• 39:48Speaker 02

  When he has regained some strength, he hoists his pack on his back and steals himself for another scramble up the mountains. Keeping an eye out for the reappearance of his attackers, he is deep inside the dense forest, twigs snapping beneath his feet. Close by, he hears the hooves of a family of roe deer.

• 40:09Speaker 02

  Eventually, the trees give way to a more barren landscape of rocky crags. His breath shortens with every step upwards, but he wants to put as much distance as possible between himself and danger.

• 40:23Speaker 02

  Then he sees a gully. Exhausted, he stops for a brief rest and allows himself to close his eyes for a moment. It would be easy to fall asleep. But then, his ears prick up at a hissing sound, something flying at high speed.

• 40:41Speaker 02

  A split second later, before he has time to react, searing pain floods through his left shoulder. He screams out, gasping at what he discovers to be the wooden length of an arrow shaft. It's gone in deep, piercing skin and ripping through flesh. He feels the blood draining from his face and a wave of nausea comes over him, but there's nothing for it. He has to get it out. Teeth clenched against the pain, he gets some purchase on it and works it free. But with his vision now blurring, when he holds it in front of his eyes, he sees only the wooden shaft. The arrowhead must still be embedded in his back.

• 41:24Speaker 02

  He tries to move his left arm, but finds it is lame. His breathing is more labored than ever and he feels beads of sweat gathering all over. On the floor around his feet, a growing pool of crimson.

• 41:39Speaker 02

  Unsteady now, he lunges this way and that, then falls into the gully. Dizzy and disoriented, he slides into unconsciousness. A few minutes later, he is dead.

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• 43:00Speaker 02

  The discovery of the arrowhead suggests that Ötzi didn't simply succumb to exposure after all, but may have been murdered. By whom and why remain unanswered questions, but it is now clear that someone, or perhaps a band of people, was pursuing Ötzi. Was this some intertribal trouble perhaps? Or maybe he had offended somebody sufficiently that they were intent on revenge? Mere banditry seems unlikely as there is little evidence Ötzi was robbed. The very presence of that valuable axe suggests a different motive.

• 43:36Speaker 02

  But even as these key questions remain elusive, the work of disparate scientists ensures that his last hours can be described with some confidence. The arrowhead, which left a half-inch hole in his shoulder, reveals his cause of death, while other injuries around it tell the tale of the arrow shaft becoming dislodged. He had a hematoma to his head as well, but whether this is the result of some blunt force assault or simply of falling violently to the ground, we will never know.

• 44:07Speaker 02

  Analysis of his stomach contents tells us what he had to eat in the hours before his death, and then there is that wound to the hand.

• 44:15Speaker 03

  We found that the Iceman had on his right hand a quite deep cut between the thumb and the first finger, so it was surprising. So we took a little sample and we analyzed it under the microscope. And we could find that this was actually a cut wound that was in the process of healing because you can see identify certain substances that are related to wound healing. So we could say this wound must have happened maybe three or four days before he actually died. So then the question was, could this be related also to the fatal arrow shot?

• 44:49Speaker 02

  More telling evidence comes from Professor Klaus Dieter Ugo, a paleobotanist or expert in plant fossils from Innsbruck. Through analysis of samples taken from the mummy's intestines, he isolates different types of pollen related to plants and trees that grow at a range of heights.

• 45:07Speaker 03

  So in the end, let's say, in his study, he could reconstruct the last about 40 hours of the Iceman's way he took in the mountains. It looked like that he started from the valley, went up about 1,500 to 2,000 meters, then he went down again, and then he very quickly went up into the high mountains. And this looks like a pattern that could be related to a kind of conflict. And if related to the hand wound, we then reconstructed that he maybe had a kind of fight already with somebody, that the person hurt him. He got this cut wound, but he still could defend himself. And then maybe he was fleeing into high mountains because maybe he thought he's safe up there.

• 45:51Speaker 03

  But either the person followed him or there were other people involved that then killed him.

• 45:56Speaker 02

  The team even takes their theory to the Munich police and their crime scene investigation experts.

• 46:03Speaker 03

  And they said, yeah, it's quite often patterned that people, if you try to kill somebody and your first attempt, you do it with a knife or that it close to the person, but if you don't succeed, the second attempt, you always do with a distance weapon, like a pistol or a gun.

• 46:19Speaker 02

  Or, as in this case, an arrow.

• 46:22Speaker 03

  They said it's quite often just a personal conflict. And the fact also that everything remained at the finding site. For example, this very valuable copper axe that you would expect somebody that he takes away, but it remained there. So this is quite typical for a personal homicide, that you just want to kill the person, but you're not interested in all his belongings.

• 46:48Speaker 02

  Strong theories, although definitive proof is unlikely ever to come to light now.

• 46:54Speaker 02

  Even as Ertzi refuses to yield up all his secrets, year by year, there are more discoveries and revelations. In 2011, the South Tyrell Museum of Archaeology celebrates the discovery's 20th anniversary by commissioning the Dutch paleoartists Adrie and Alphonse Kennis to create a three-dimensional reconstruction of the Iceman. Using CT scans, 3D photos of his skeleton, and other forensic evidence, they craft a hyper-realistic model that brings him dramatically to life. His body, a case study of a tough alpine existence.

• 47:32Speaker 02

  The following year sees another major step forward, as an international team of researchers publish a paper reporting Ertzi's complete genetic blueprint, or genome.

• 47:43Speaker 02

  It's the culmination of DNA analysis that began back in the early 1990s, and offers a clearer picture of his medical history, along with facts about, for example, his blood type, which happens to be O. It emerges that he was lactose intolerant and predisposed to heart disease. He is also the first known European to suffer from Lyme disease, the bacterial infection caused by tick bites.

• 48:09Speaker 02

  His own ancient ancestors, meanwhile, likely came from the region roughly equivalent to modern-day Turkey.

• 48:15Speaker 03

  So descendants from the people that during the Neolithic transition came from the Near East of Anatolia to Europe, starting from maybe 10,000 years ago, and maybe in that area, it's thought that people arrived there maybe 6,000 or 7,000 years ago, and he is actually a descendant of these people who lived there, who already are different from the hunter-gatherers. But on the other hand, he's also quite unique, because we could not identify or find anyone, at least from the skeletons from a similar time period, that are really somehow related in. So somehow he must have been part of a bit-isolated population, which is quite common also in the mountain area, because you have these valleys, and they're often separated and not easy to reach.

• 49:03Speaker 02

  Ertzel also provides insights into how ancient populations dealt with medical problems in an age where treatments were in short supply. As well as the tattoos, potentially suggesting some form of acupuncture, his stomach contains evidence of what could be a kind of herbal remedy. Scientists find traces of ferns that are normally poisonous if consumed, but which, taken in small doses, would have fought against the intestinal parasites from which he suffered. Similarly, there are particular types of fungi found in his gut. While initially it was thought that he may have taken these to act as a hallucinogenic drug, it now seems more likely he'd been attempting to treat a fever or some similar complaint.

• 49:46Speaker 02

  If Ertzi was self-medicating, it implies a culture with a level of therapeutic knowledge not previously fully recognized.

• 49:56Speaker 02

  Today, well over 30 years since he first emerged from the ice, he remains the focus of intense study. And as new scientific approaches and methods emerge, hopes are high for more discoveries to come. Some researchers hope to shed further light on prehistoric life, while others continue to search for a more complete picture of how Ertzi met his end. For Albert Zink, there is particular interest in what this ancient Iceman can tell us about our modern selves. For instance, by building greater knowledge of his microbiome.

• 50:31Speaker 03

  So the microbiome is the composition of all bacteria, fungi that live inside and on us, let's say. And especially intestinal microbiome is very in focus now also in modern medicine, because we know it relates a lot also to diet, that a lot of relations with diseases, with intolerances, allergies, and it's very important to have a well-balanced microbiome. And we now try to understand how his microbiome was composed, and we already have quite good data, which goes in the direction that it looks like that he still had a quite diverse microbiome. So we know today from modern populations, especially indigenous populations, those people who are living still close to nature, they usually have a more diverse, higher-diverse

• 51:16Speaker 03

  microbiome, like the western, so-called westernized population like us, who maybe are not so active anymore, but maybe overweight, the diet is not so really well-balanced anymore, and we see this disadvantages of this.

• 51:35Speaker 02

  It has been an extraordinary journey since that September day back in 1991, when the ice surrendered Ertzi up to the world. Ever since, this enigmatic man has become a poster boy for prehistoric research.

• 51:50Speaker 02

  Though he could have no concept of the significance of his contribution to our understanding of our ancestors, this diminutive figure has nonetheless managed to connect humanity across the millennia.

• 52:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, he's so important, because it's really a unique finding, a combination also of his well-preserved body, the presence of all his belongings, and tools, and clothing, and so on, puts him in a very special place, and gives us so much insights into his time period, how the living conditions were at that time, and especially it has us so much also how the interaction of people and their diseases and the environment was, and we can still connect this to our modern period and learn so much through him from the past that maybe could help us also in the future.

• 52:50Speaker 02

  Next time on Short History of, we'll bring you a short history of the Boer Wars.

• 52:57Speaker 06

  There are lots of historians who would say that Britain won the Boer War, but actually lost the peace, because in the long run, South Africa became a republic. So in the long run, the Boers won, Afrikaans nationalism triumphed, you know? And the war helped to sort of stoke that, the memory of the war, the trauma of the war, those concentration camps, were big things in the rise of Afrikaans nationalism, you know, what they'd endured.

• 53:24Speaker 02

  That's next time.

• 53:28Speaker 02

  You can listen to the next two episodes of Short History of right now, without waiting and without adverts, by subscribing to Noiser Plus. Just hit the link in the episode description, or head to www-noiser.com/subscriptions to unlock more episodes today.

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