Otzi had the physique of a man who did a lot of strenuous walking but little upper-body work there was hardly any fat on his body. He was about 45, give or take six years, respectably old for the late Neolithic age - but still in his prime. He was 5 feet 5 inches tall (about average height for his time), weighed 110 pounds, had brown eyes and shoulder-length, dark brown hair, and a size 7 1/2 foot. The more scientists learn, the more recognizable the Iceman becomes. Those contents, as it turned out, were critical in determining with surprising precision what happened to Otzi and even helped shed light on the possible motive of his killer. "In a lot of cases we are not able to do that even now." "Imagine, we know the stomach contents of a person 5,000 years ago," Horn said.
ICEMAN KILLER DEATH CAUSE SKIN
The glacier not only froze Otzi where he had died, but the high humidity of the ice also kept his organs and skin largely intact. A homicide detective has managed to piece together a remarkably detailed picture of what befell the Iceman on that fateful day around 3,300 B.C., near the crest of the Otztal Alps. The area where the Iceman, the world’s most perfectly preserved mummy, was from, in Bolzano, Italy, March 11, 2017. Most were ritually prepared, which usually meant removal of internal organs preservation with chemicals or exposure to destructive desert conditions. There are a few mummies in the world as old as Otzi, but none so well preserved. "But actually he's in better condition than recent homicide victims I've worked on who have been found out in the open." "When I was first contacted with the idea, I thought it was too difficult, too much time has passed," said Horn, a noted profiler.
But now, armed with a wealth of new scientific information that researchers have compiled, Horn has managed to piece together a remarkably detailed picture of what befell the Iceman on that fateful day around 3,300 B.C., near the crest of the Otztal Alps. The cause of death remained uncertain until 10 years later, when an X-ray of the mummy pointed to foul play in the form of a flint arrowhead embedded in his back, just under his shoulder. Often called the Iceman, he is the world's most perfectly preserved mummy, a Copper Age fellow who had been frozen inside a glacier along the northern Italian border with Austria until warming global temperatures melted the ice and two hikers discovered him in 1991. The unknown victim, nicknamed Otzi, has literally been in cold storage in her museum for a quarter-century. "Well, I have the coldest case of all for you," said Angelika Fleckinger, director of the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology, in Bolzano, Italy. "Yes I do," Horn said, recalling their conversation. (Dmitry Kostyukov/The New York Times)īOLZANO, Italy - When the head of a small Italian museum called Detective Inspector Alexander Horn of the Munich Police, she asked him if he investigated cold cases.
A homicide detective has managed to piece together a remarkably detailed picture of what befell the Iceman on that fateful day around 3,300 B.C., near the crest of the Otzal Alps. A reconstruction of the Iceman, the world’s most perfectly preserved mummy, in the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, Italy, March 11, 2017.