When two German hikers found Ötzi in the Alps in 1991, he was so pristine that they thought he was a mountaineer who had recently died. By the way, he was a murder victim from 5,300 years ago.

Getty Images Two German hikers watch Ötzi on the glacier where they found him before they could remove him.

On September 19, 1991, two hikers came across a frozen corpse in the Italian Alps. They had no way of knowing at the time how historic their find was, as the corpse was later revealed to be the oldest preserved human ever found, and is now known as Ötzi the Ice Map.

Not only was Ötzi found to be over 5,300 years old, but he was also the victim of a murder. It is currently believed that the Neolithic map was destroyed by the shroud before being naturally mummified by the freezing temperatures. In fact, the surprising freshness of his body today is less than half a burst.

Ötzi’s accidental discovery The ice map

When German tourists Helmυt and Erika Simo came across the frozen corpse of Ötzi the ice map on the Schпalstal/Val Seпales glacier in 1991, the couple initially thought they had just bumped into a fellow traveler who had recently arrived. suffered a fatal accident.

Oly Ötzi’s head and shoulders were visible above the ice that froze the rest of his body. He was lying almost face down.

Not realizing how old and delicate their find was, the Austrian rescuers who first responded to the call damaged the body while trying to remove it from the ice. A jackhammer damaged Ötzi’s hip and thigh, and his backpack and frozen bow were also broken.

But over the next three days, a small team of archaeologists who extracted the frozen body realized their mistake. After taking the body to a medical examiner’s office in Ipsbruck, Austria, they determined it was at least 4,000 years old.

It was later confirmed that “Ötzi the Ice Map”, as he was nicknamed by an Austrian journalist in reference to the site of his discovery in the Ötztal Valley Alps, had died sometime during the Copper Age or Neolithic, between 3350 and 3100 BC, making him the oldest preserved human being ever found.

But what made this find even more remarkable was that, unlike Egyptian and Ica mummies desiccated by desert climates, Ötzi was a “wet” mummy, found in a perfect combination of preservation where the glacier on which died froze his body while the moisture was in the ice. He kept his organs and jumped practically intact.

What was your Neolithic life like?

A close-up of the 5,300-year-old murder victim when she was found.

Because Ötzi was so well preserved, researchers were able to perform what was essentially a modern autopsy on him, leading to a fascinating glimpse into what life was like for this map that lived 35 centuries ago.

Not only was it determined that he was 40 years old when he died, but Ötzi was also likely a jumper, weighing 110 pounds. He was five feet three inches tall.

It was also determined that he had testicular parasites, stomach ulcers, arthritis, and Lyme disease. Additionally, it was discovered that he shared a genetic affinity with the inhabitants of the islands of Sardinia and Corsica and may have been lactose intolerant.

Checks of his stomach also showed various types of pollen, suggesting that he probably died in spring or summer, but that he had traveled through different elevations in the mountains shortly before his death.

Meanwhile, the highly preserved condition of his ship also showed that it had 61 tattoos, which had been made by rubbing charcoal into type cuts.

Before Ötzi, scientists could only guess what life was like in the Copper Age. But from their clothing, researchers deduced that people 3,500 years ago wore textile tights and animal jumpers. The arrow feathers on the Neolithic map also suggested that its people understood general ballistics.

Although Ötzi’s frozen body, the ice map, served as a treasure trove of information for scientists, the cause of his death was not discovered until a decade after he was initially found. It was then that a scan using X-ray technology revealed something lodged in the left shoulder of the acetic map that had previously gone unnoticed: an arrowhead.

Investigating the murder of Copper Αge

A murder is still a murder, no matter where it happened, so the museum where Otzi rests called Detective Inspector Alexander Horp of the Munich police to see what they could find.

Inspector Hor was surprised to note that the body was “in better condition than recent homicide victims I have worked with who have been found outdoors,” even though this particular body predates the Pyramids.

The public DomaiпÖtzi was in such a pristine state of preservation that researchers were able to perform a modern autopsy on it.

In 2012, a report was published speculating about the Icemap death map. The man’s father suggested he was shot from behind, but the fact that the victim’s followers had not been robbed led Inspector Hor to conclude that this was a personal father’s homicide, although arrests appear unlikely. . .

But the mysteries surrounding Ötzi the Ice Map have gone beyond his murder. Because the body was removed from the place where it had been resting for thousands of years, there are rumors of a curse on those who disturbed it.

In fact, Helmυt Simo, one of the hikers who found Ötzi in 1991, encountered his epd during a strange snowstorm and was himself found buried under ice and in a water hole far from where he made the discovery he changed history.

These days, Ötzi is being held in a freezer at the South Tyrolean Archeology Museum in Bolzapo, Italy. It is estimated that between 10 and 15 scientists request to study its remains each year.