Ötzi's naturally mummified remains are now stored in a cold chamber at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, Italy. He was genetically predisposed to arteriosclerosis, and a CT scan confirms that his is the oldest known case of heart disease in the world.īased on carbon dating, Ötzi lived roughly 5,200 years ago (3350–3110 B.C.) Ötzi had broken several ribs and his nose during his lifetime, and horizontal grooves on his fingernails indicate had repeated bouts of physical stress- likely stemming from malnutrition-in the few months before his death. His 61 tattoos map onto the places where his bones and joints show wear and tear (as well as onto modern acupuncture points). He suffered from cavities, intestinal parasites, Lyme disease, and sore knees, hips, shoulders, and back. The Iceman had type O blood, was lactose intolerant, and had a rare genetic anomaly that prevented his 12th pair of ribs from forming. Read how researchers reconstructed Ötzi’s frantic, final mountain climb.
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“We could prove he had brown eyes and dark brown hair, and he had a typical Mediterranean skin tone,” says Albert Zink, head of the EURAC Institute of Mummy Studies in Bolzano, which has done much of the core research on Ötzi. His eyes-still preserved in their sockets-were long thought to be blue, but genomic analysis has revealed otherwise. Ötzi was wiry, short (5’2”), and about 46 years old when he died. Here’s what three decades of research have revealed about the life and death of the Iceman-and what the future study of his extraordinary remains may reveal. “Ötzi is, in my eyes, the best investigated human body the whole world has ever seen,” says Oliver Peschel, the Munich-based forensic pathologist in charge of Ötzi’s conservation. Ötzi is equally in demand by scientists, who jump at the rare opportunity to study the incredibly well-preserved remains of a man who lived long before the rise of Europe’s earliest cities, and even before Egypt’s first pyramid was built. In an average year, about 300,000 visitors travel to Bolzano to marvel at the ancient Iceman through a thick glass window that affords a view into his frosty chamber. Go behind the scenes of Ötzi’s 2010 autopsy. Four or five times a year, his remains are sprayed with sterile water to create an icy, protective exoskeleton that ensures he stays a “ wet mummy” (one naturally preserved in a wet rather than dry environment). Today, Ötzi is carefully tended to by researchers at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, Italy, where his wizened body is kept in a custom cold chamber maintained at a constant temperature of –21.2 degrees Fahrenheit. Naturally preserved by more than 5,000 years of sun, wind, and freezing temperatures, the leathery remains of Ötzi the Iceman quickly became a global sensation, the subject of countless books and documentaries and even a feature film reconstructing his life in Neolithic Europe and his violent death. Thirty years ago this month, Europe’s most famous mummy was discovered lying face-down in the ice, on the edge of a lake nearly two miles high in the Ötztal Alps bordering Austria and Italy.
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