Otzi - The Iceman of the Alps
life in the stone age pictures images
On Thursday, September 19, 1991, at about 1.30 p.m. on a sunny afternoon
Erika and Helmut Simon, from
Nuremberg in Germany, were enjoying a vacation walking
through icy and rock-strewn terrain high up on a mountain overlooking the Ötz valley
in the Alpine
borderlands between Austria and Italy.
On their descent from a peak near Tisenjoch they strayed a little from
the recommended route in the hope of finding a short cut and, as they traversed an elevated plateau near a retreating mountain glacier
at some 3210 meters above sea level, they passed a gully filled with thawing ice and
melt-water within which they noticed something unusual. Further investigation showed this object
to be an actual human corpse.
Much of these human remains lay under the ice and melt-water but the back of the head and upper
back and shoulders were exposed - the Simons also noticed several pieces of rolled-up tree bark near the body
and took a picture of what they now presumed to be the unfortunate victim of some sort of, quite recent,
accident on the mountain before leaving to report their find.
No more pictures
were taken that day because their camera used rolls of photographic film and when they
discovered the body their camera's roll of film was nearly used up.
The following day two "officiating" Austrians, a policeman and a mountain rescue officer, showed up to try to recover
the remains - with the aid of a pneumatic drill! Unfortunately the weather was markedly less kind than when
the body was discovered and the pair worked semi-immersed in freezing waters and some damage was done to the left of
the frozen ice mummy as it lay under the ice and the freezing cold water.
The pair found that they could not achieve recovery with the equipment the had brought with them
that day. Further efforts at recovery took place over the next few days amidst difficulties over the availability
of helicopters, heavy snowfalls, and steep drop-offs in temperature. On sunday 21st many
objects strewn at a various distances around the gully were recovered. The next day the ice mummy itself was removed under the supervision
of a forensic expert with the process being recorded on film. Numerous pieces of leather and hide, string, straps and
clumps of hay were also recovered and preserved for further study.
The remains were then taken to the Institute of
Forensic Medicine in Innsbruck, Austria.
Fatalities occur every year in the high alps due to such things as climbing accidents, exhaustion,
adverse weather or sudden deaths. The bodies of such victims are often recovered shortly afterwards but
they can also subsequently disappear
into the snowy landscape.
Although some six bodies had already been recovered from the
high alps already in 1991 an archaeological expert was called in to give advice in this particular case because some of
the artifacts discovered seemed to be potentially very ancient.
This archaeological expertise arrived on the scene all of five days after the initial discovery and the Otzi
ice mummy was recognised as being of great antiquity. Steps were taken to better preserve the remains by
controlling temperature and humidity conditions.
International complications came into play as, although the body was discovered in a place where waters as they
drained from this part of the Alps flowed
towards Austria, its actual resting-place was confirmed, by a subsequent border survey of early October, to have been some 93 metres
inside the Italian border. Agreements were reached between the relevant authorities allowing for the continued
responsibility for the investigation of the corpse to lie with the Forensic Institute at Innsbruck.
A dispute about "ownership" of Otzi the Iceman, as the remains became known in
an emerging world-wide fascination with
this "cold case" of an ice mummy found on the Austrian-Italian frontier, continued for six years until it was agreed that
the remains would be preserved in a purpose built facility in the South Tyrol region of Italy but with it being understood
that the Austrian team would continue to be involved in researches and investigations.
The gully in which the body was found had helped to preserve it, in its frozen state, from the immense weight of snow which
seems to have
covered the site for most of the several millenia since Otzi, pronounced Oot-zee , lost his life. Otzi's
remains must have been claimed
by icy cold quite soon after his demise as even his internal organs were found to be intact - they were able
for instance to actually analyse his stomach contents which included ibex meat and primitively cultivated "einkorn" grains.
Over several years of subsequent investigation forensic findings relating to this frozen body in the Alps included
the time of death as being some 5,300
years ago - in the stone age! The deceased being a male of some 30 to 45 years of age with tattoos on his body and worn,
but otherwise perfect, teeth and a probably quite troublesome infestation of intestinal whipworms.
The deceased had come to a violent end - an arrowhead was found buried in the body and there was evidence of Otzi
having been struck with a blunt instrument.
Based on the evidence of the several artifacts found together with the remains researchers
now attribute a perhaps surprising degree of technological attainment to the Otzi the Iceman and
his stone-age colleagues. It was realised that those trying
to recover the body had unwittingly trampled all over a hugely significant archaeological site and had even
broken Otzi's stone-age bow and the frame of his stone-age back pack, in trying to prize him from the ice.
There is evidence of quite detailed attention to the preparation of clothing with which to dress against the cold:-
And evidence of a sophisticted range of tools:-
The above selection of items, (a bow made of yew and a quiver full of arrows were also recovered), include an axe with
a handle of yew together with a refined copper blade held in place by leather strips and a type of
tarry pitch derived from processed birch tree sap. The finding of this 99.7% pure copper blade in circumstances
which allowed dating to five thousand three hundred years ago pushed back archaeologists previous assessment
of the beginnings of the so-called "copper age" in Europe by a thousand years!
Traces of copper and arsenic were found in Otzi's hair consistent with some exposure to fumes from copper smelting.
There is also a flint blade knife with its scabbard (on right), and the tubular
item in the centre is called a retoucheur.
 This example of a retoucheur is an approximately 12 cm-long pencil-like tool for working with flint
was made from a piece of
lime branch which was shaped to a point at one end. At the pointed end an approximately 6 cm-long rod was driven
into the central canal, leaving a few millimetres protruding. The rod turned out to be the fire-hardened point of
a stag’s antler.
To fashion tools of flint, a flint cobble would first be hammered with hard blows to produce flakes and crude blades.
These were then precisely shaped by pressing against the edge of the workpiece with a retoucheur to remove small
fragments. The same method is used to resharpen dull edges.
When the end of the retoucheur became blunt with wear, it could be sharpened like a pencil.
As to the tattoos - one of several groups of vertical lines are located to the left and right of the spinal column. Others are on the left
calf,
on the right instep and on the inner and outer ankle joint, two further lines cross the left wrist. A cross-shaped mark
appears on the back of the right knee and beside the left Achilles tendon.
Later researchers considered that the tattoos may have been intended as therapeutic measures rather than as
decorative or religious symbols as, astonishingly, these tattooed areas seem to correspond to accepted skin acupuncture
lines.
Before Otzi it was thought that this
treatment had only originated two thousand years later in Asia.
 The remains of Otzi the Iceman now lie in the Südtiroler Archeologiemuseum in Bozen / Bolzano in Italy's
South Tyrol
where they are stored in a nitrogen rich atmosphere under conditions of controlled temperature and humidity for their preservation but can be
seen through a viewing window by interested visitors.
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