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A prehistoric hunter known as Oetzi whose well-preserved body was found on a snow-covered mountain in the Alps died more than 5,000 years ago after being struck in the back by an arrow, scientists said in an article published Wednesday. Researchers from Switzerland and Italy used newly developed medical scanners to examine the hunter's frozen corpse to determine that the arrow had torn a hole in an artery beneath his left collarbone, leading to a massive loss of blood. That, in turn, caused Oetzi to go into shock and suffer a heart attack, according to the article published online in...

Researchers say Italy's 5,000-year-old Iceman died from head trauma, not arrow The Associated PressPublished: August 28, 2007 ROME, Italy: Researchers studying Iceman, the 5,000-year-old mummy found frozen in the Italian Alps, have come up with a new theory for how he died, saying he died from head trauma, not by bleeding to death from an arrow. Just two months ago, researchers in Switzerland published an article in the Journal of Archaeological Science saying the mummy — also known as Oetzi — had died after the arrow tore a hole in an artery beneath his left collarbone, leading to massive loss...

Italian workers building an addition to a kindergarten have unearthed a well preserved female skeleton who might be relatively contemporaneous with Ötzi, the Iceman mummy discovered 20 years ago in a melting glacier in South Tyrol. The "Lady of Introd" or "Ötzi's girlfriend," as the skeleton was nicknamed in Italy, was found in the tiny Alpine village of Introd, in the Val d'Aosta, famous to be the preferred vacationing spot for both Pope John II and his successor Benedict XVI. According to archaeologists and anthropologists, the woman has been lying on her right side, with her head facing west, for...

The National Geographic has info, a teaser for an October 26 Nova special: The genetic results add both information and intrigue. From his genes, we now know that the Iceman had brown hair and brown eyes and that he was probably lactose intolerant and thus could not digest milk—somewhat ironic, given theories that he was a shepherd. Not surprisingly, he is more related to people living in southern Europe today than to those in North Africa or the Middle East, with close connections to geographically isolated modern populations in Sardinia, Sicily, and the Iberian Peninsula. The DNA analysis also revealed...

The official opinion remains that an arrow in his left shoulder was the cause of death for Ötzi. But the new study raises the possibility -- for some, at least -- that he fell over after being shot by an arrow. And, at higher than 10,000 feet in elevation, his alpine fall may have made the situation much worse. "Maybe he fell down or maybe he had a fight up there, nobody knows," said Wolfgang Recheis, a physicist in the radiology department at the University of Innsbruck in Austria. "With this cut alone, at 3,250 meters, it would have been...

Living Relatives Of Iceman Mummy Found By Rossella Lorenzi/ Published October 14, 2013/ Discovery News A reconstruction of Otzi the Iceman -- a remarkably well preserved 5,300-year-old mummy sometimes lovingly called "Frozen Frit" -- created by Dutch forensic experts. (HEIKE ENGEL-21LUX / SDTIROLER ARCHOLOGIEMUSEUM / NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC DEUTSCHLAND) Ötzi the Iceman has at least 19 living male relatives in the Austrian Tirol, according to a genetic study into the origins of the people who now inhabit the region. Scientists from the Institute of Legal Medicine at Innsbruck Medical University analyzed DNA samples taken from 3,700 blood donors in the Tyrol...

The people of the Mondsee Lake settlement were apparently relatively advanced within this cultural group. They had metallurgical skills, which were rare in Europe. They cleverly searched the mountains for copper deposits, melted the crude ore in clay ovens and made refined, shimmering red weapons out of the metal. In dugout canoes... they paddled along the region's river networks and sold their goods in areas of present-day Switzerland and to their relatives on Lake Constance. Even Otzi the Iceman had an axe, made of so-called Mondsee copper. At approximately 3200 B.C., says Binsteiner, the master blacksmiths were struck by a...

Archaeologists in canton Bern have discovered a village built on piles at Lake Biel with an impressive defensive fortification dating back to around 3,200 BC. Such villages from this period are new to researchers; in the lake archaeology of central Europe they have only been found dating from 1,500 years later. A statement from the authorities in canton Bern on Friday said that the find shed new light on the social behaviour of the local people at that time. It meant that they were not always peaceful. The researchers note that no fewer than seven pile villages have been found...

A 5,300-year-old mummified 'ice man' unearthed in the Alps belonged to a previously unknown branch of the human family tree, scientists have discovered. No trace of the lineage appears to remain today, meaning that the 'ice man' - dubbed 'Oetzi' - is unlikely to have any descendants. Oetzi's mummified remains were found in September 1991 in the Eastern Alps near the Austro-Italian border. The 5,300-year-old remains of Oetzi the iceman. Scientists have failed to trace his lineage, fearing his family may have become extinct He was about 46 years old when he met his violent death. Examinations revealed that he...

From the analysis of the intestinal contents of the 5,200-year-old Iceman from the Eastern Alps, Professor James Dickson from the University of Glasgow in the UK and his team have shed some light on the mummy's lifestyle and some of the events leading up to his death. By identifying six different mosses in his alimentary tract, they suggest that the Iceman may have travelled, injured himself and dressed his wounds. The Iceman is the first glacier mummy to have fragments of mosses in his intestine. This is surprising as mosses are neither palatable nor nutritious and there are few reports...

Doctors who studied the Iceman, a mummified Stone Age hunter found in Italy in 1991, announced conclusive proof Wednesday that he was shot to death with a flint-tipped arrow rather than dying of exposure as once thought. "He only lived for a short time after the arrow impact," said Andreas Nerlich, who headed a joint study by Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich and experts from Bolzano, Italy. Shortly before he was shot in the back, the Iceman suffered a non-lethal blow with a blunt object, possibly a stone from a slingshot, Nerlich's team said in a letter to the online...

sing cutting-edge microscopy techniques, researchers have gained insight into how human mummies can be extremely well-preserved for thousands of years. A team of scientists from Germany and Italy has investigated skin samples from Europe's oldest natural mummy, the 5,300-year-old "Iceman" who was buried in a glacier shortly after death in the Otzal Alps between Italy and Austria. The researchers found that the underlying structure of the mummy's skin is largely unaltered compared with the skin of a modern living human, likely maintaining its protective function due to dehydration... Since the Iceman's discovery, investigations using optical and scanning electron microscopes have...

The 5,300-year-old "Iceman", may not have died at the site in the Italian Alps where he was found 19 years ago, but was only ceremonially buried there, according to a new theory revealed on Thursday. Oetzi, the 5,300-year-old "Iceman", may not have died at the site in the Italian Alps where he was found 19 years ago, but was only ceremonially buried there, according to a new theory revealed on Thursday. Until now, archaeologists thought Oetzi, whose mummified corpse was discovered in a high mountain pass in the Oetztal Alps in 1991, died at that spot from wounds he had...

As part of a new exhibit at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano (www.iceman.it), two Dutch experts -- Alfons and Adrie Kennis -- have made a new model of the living Oetzi, this time with brown eyes. Indeed, recent research has shown the Iceman, now approaching the tender age of 5,300 years, did not have blue eyes as previously believed. The Kennis model was created based on three-dimensional images of the mummy's skeleton as well as the latest forensic technology, and will go on display on March 1 until January 15, 2012.

Less than 2 hours before he hiked his last steps in the Tyrolean Alps 5000 years ago, Ötzi the Iceman fueled up on a last meal of ibex meat. That was the conclusion of a talk here last week at the 7th World Congress on Mummy Studies, during which researchers—armed with Ötzi's newly sequenced genome and a detailed dental analysis—also concluded that the Iceman had brown eyes and probably wasn't much of a tooth brusher. The Iceman, discovered in the Italian Alps in 1991 some 5200 years after his death, has been a gold mine of information about Neolithic life,...

Shortly after 6 p.m. on a drizzling, dreary November day in 2010, two men dressed in green surgical scrubs opened the door of the Iceman's chamber in the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, Italy. They slid the frozen body onto a stainless steel gurney. One of the men was a young scientist named Marco Samadelli. Normally, it was his job to keep the famous Neolithic mummy frozen under the precise conditions that had preserved it for 5,300 years, following an attack that had left the Iceman dead, high on a nearby mountain. On this day, however, Samadelli had...

Dozens of women want Bronze Age hunter's babies Dozens of women have asked to be made pregnant by a prehistoric iceman who died 5,000 years ago. The body of "Otzi the Iceman" was discovered by hikers in 1991 as ice melted in the Schnalstal glacier, high in the Italian Alps. Alex Susanna, director of the Bozen Museum where his body is exhibited, says requests have been received by many women wanting to have Otzi's babies. He told Austrian broadcasting company ORF that all of the requests had been turned down, not least because Otzi's penis had decayed away. Otzi was...

Secrets of a Stone Age Rambo They thought they had found the corpse of an ancient shepherd, but the iceman from 5,300 years ago now turns out to have been a hi-tech warrior Robin McKie Sunday May 4, 2003 The Observer (UK) When hikers spotted a corpse poking from the Schnalstal glacier in the Austrian-Italian Alps in 1991, they thought they had found the body of a lost climber. Then researchers took a closer look and announced the iceman was an ancient shepherd, a primitive farm worker who had got lost in the mountains and had died of hypothermia. Yet...

Ancient iceman probably has no modern relatives Buzz UpSendSharePrint Thu Oct 30, 2:21 pm ET Reuters – An undated handout file photo shows "Otzi", Italy's prehistoric iceman. "Otzi", … LONDON (Reuters) – "Otzi," Italy's prehistoric iceman, probably does not have any modern day descendants, according to a study published Thursday. A team of Italian and British scientists who sequenced his mitochondrial DNA -- which is passed down through the mother's line -- found that Otzi belonged to a genetic lineage that is either extremely rare or has died out. Otzi's 5,300-year-old corpse was found frozen in the Tyrolean Alps in...

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