January 4, 2012 • 23 mins
In 1991, two hikers in the Alps found a mysterious body. The frozen mummy turned out to be a 5,300-year-old man -- a discovery that's given researchers an unprecedented peek into the Copper Age. Tune in to learn more about the Iceman.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Fair Dowdy and I'm Deblina choklate boarding and while
Debilina and I were preparing our end of the year
historical news episodes, Debilina let me know about a story
(00:24):
I had missed in two eleven. Let's see, the Iceman
had a girlfriend. I know this was news to me,
so it's not a situation like another big news story
from eleven one that I did manage to catch. The
Roman Era Romeo and Juliette of Medina, who are two
skeletons found kind of romantically buried next to each other,
(00:46):
holding hands, staring into each other's face. Archaeologists have not
unearthed a lady at sea lying next to the iceman,
which is what I was imagining. I was thinking, how
have they missed another ice Boddie there since nineteen? I mean,
more importantly, how have you missed it? Because I didn't
realize this, but Sarah Dowdy has an Utsi obsession. It's
(01:07):
not a Nutzi obsession. You have a crush on the iceman. No,
that would just be Groad. He's five thousand years old.
I mean, he's an interesting guy, and I think that
interest will be conveyed later in this episode. That first,
to clear up matters on Nutsy's girlfriend. She's just in
the same general area and from the same general time period,
(01:30):
but we're going to talk about her a little more
at the end of the episode. Well. Researching that story though,
to Blean and I realized that has really been where
was kind of a banner year for Iceman News in general.
There were theories that came out about how he lived
and how he died that completely turned earlier theories upside down.
(01:51):
So how about a new episode, an entire episode on
everybody's favorite copper age man, including I mean, he's got
to be your favorite copper age and to if you
narrow it down like that, He's definitely falls into that
category for me. But it's just an interesting story too.
I mean, it spans five thousand, three hundred years with
all these twists and turns and a deep freeze in
(02:13):
the middle of course. So we usually start off these
podcasts with, um, you know, the early years of our subject.
We can't exactly do that for this episode, so we
will start with the discovery of Utsee instead, which happened
September nineteenth. Two German hikers Erica and Helmett Simon, were
out enjoying some fine weather in the up Stall Alps,
(02:37):
near the border of Austria and Italy, and they decided
to take a little shortcut and wound up walking past
a gully filled with melted snow. And of course there's
all this white snow, white ice everywhere. But something brown
caught their eye and they thought maybe it was trash,
(02:57):
and they went over and looked at it. No, it
was much more horrifying than that. It was a dead
body with a few pieces of birch bark around it,
so how scary. They figured it was a dead hiker,
someone who had gotten lost in the gully in recent years,
something like that, something very alarming. So the Simons took
a photo and then they left to report their findings
(03:19):
to the authorities. The next day, men with drills arrived
to chip away the ice, still holding the body's lower
torso and legs, so, not realizing that this was a
stunningly rare archaeological find, they damaged the body's hip and
had to abandon their efforts as the weather started to
turn bad. So by the next day some people were
(03:39):
starting to notice that this body was not clothed in
like hiker gear from the eighties or something. It was
then some decidedly old fashioned looking garments. Still, though, nobody
really had much time to think because the weather was
getting worse and worse and it was making the extraction
a real nightmare. But by September twenty three the body
(04:00):
was finally removed, and of course no archaeologists were present
to witness it because they didn't think that this was
an archaeological matter at the at that time. There was
one lucky catch though, The whole thing was filmed by
the Innsbruck University Institute of Forensic Medicine, which has really
been a useful document for researchers later on. The frozen corps,
(04:23):
along with some of the string and hide and the
acts near his body were then flown to another area
of Austrian were ordered under the direction of the local prosecutor,
to the Institute of Forensic Medicine. So at this point
everybody is still operating under the assumption that this was
not an ancient body, it was a poor, unfortunate hiker,
(04:44):
and it wasn't until six days after the mummy was
found that an archaeologist was finally summoned in to check
things out. It was Conrad Spindler of Innsbruck University, and
after reviewing the body and the acts, he came out
and said he he was sure that it was at
least four thousand years old. So of course this sort
(05:06):
of changed the situation, change matters a bit, and authorities
started trying to figure out who was actually in charge
of the body because we mentioned earlier that the Simons
had been hiking near the Austrian Italian border, and of
course the presence of glaciers can make border determination a
little bit tricky sometimes. Just a few weeks after the discovery,
(05:27):
a new border study came out that said definitively the
find had been located not in Austria but in Italy,
only ninety two from the border, so that changed things
a little bit. Still, the province of South te Roll,
now responsible for the body, was content to allow the
first forensic examinations to take place in Austria. Scientists at
(05:49):
Ennsbruck cut the iceman's torso and also made cuts on
his back, the top of the skull and his legs,
so they've kind of destroyed parts of the body a little. Yeah.
Researchers today call those invasive procedures the Austrian windows. And
in nineteen they went back into Once weather got better
(06:10):
and everything they had to wait about a year. They
went back and a few other key artifacts were recovered
at the scene, like a fingernail, a bear skin, hat,
some hair, some grasses, and Sea fourteen analysis also later
confirmed spindler suspicion that the mummy was at least four
thousand years old. Turned out he was a lot older
(06:31):
than that. As we've already mentioned, it had been about
five thousand, three hundred years since this Copper age guy
had died out there on the ice. That made him
older than the Pharaoh's, older than most of the bog
bodies in Europe, so truly a unique fine for archaeologists.
The Iceman's Great Age made the media go crazy. I mean,
(06:54):
you can probably remember Iceman specials on TV from years ago,
plus all questions about him. Who was he, how did
he die? Was he a shepherd, a shaman or an outlaw?
Was he a vegetarian? Was he sacrificed? Some speculated that
he was a hoax, maybe an Egyptian or Peruvian mummy
stuck in the ice. Others realized he was more than
(07:15):
just a passing news story, and that he needed a name.
Viennese journalist Carl Wendel was the first to coin the
name Utsie, from the valley where the body came from.
But it wasn't just Utsie's great age and the mystery
surrounding his life and death that made him such an
impressive useful find. He was what the South Tyrol Museum
(07:36):
of Archaeology calls a wet mummy, which means a mummy
whose cells aren't desiccated. So normally you would think of
Egyptian mummies they're kind of almost like dust, and um
Utsi's non dust like makeup means that he could be
subjected to scientific procedures without just crumbling away. So after
(07:58):
all of these years, more than five thousand years, he's
still a bit elastic. You can kind of perform living
human or recently dead human type refutures on him. So
over the next decade that's he had X rays, CT scans,
studies of his mitochondrial DNA, bone and tooth analysis, and
a thorough analysis of any pollen on in or near
(08:21):
his body, and so bit by bit, this picture of
the iceman started to emerge. They found out he was
five ft two. He had been raised in the Azarco
River Valley but lived in the Venosta Valley. He was
old for a copper aged man, so he was about
forty five years old, and he had the aches and
pains to prove it. He had healed rib fractures, healed
(08:44):
broken nose, worn down molars, but no tooth decay. I
find that quite impressive. I think there's maybe a secret
there to be learned or something. No Coca cola or
something in his But he had hardened arteries also. So
he also had bow real lines on his fingernails, and
those meant that he had had some kind of major
(09:07):
stress or illness eight weeks, thirteen weeks, in sixteen weeks
before he died. Sometimes if you go through um some
serious illness, your fingernails stopped growing and it leaves behind
this little line. He also had tattoos covering his body,
but not decorative tattoos. They were small charcoal crosses and lines,
and they were located on the knees, ankles, wrists, in steps, calves,
(09:31):
lower back, you know places where if you were a
forty five year old, especially a forty five year old
copper age man, he might have some chronic pain, and
some of these spots even correspond to acupuncture points, so
researchers really do believe that they were some kind of
remedy for for pain he was experiencing. His copper acts
(09:54):
probably meant that he was high status, but the high
levels of arsenic in his body also suggest that he
might have been directly involved in copper metalworking. He had
a few genetic anomalies um including missing twelve ribs and
no wisdom teeth, and a few ailments too. He had
a whip worm infestation and possibly fleet I think a
(10:16):
couple flea bodies were found on his person, no big
surprise there. But he also might have been able or
might have been equipped to handle at least the whipworm infestation.
Among his gear where these hide strips with birch fungus attached,
and birch fungus is uh. It has antibiotic properties that
(10:38):
can help fight intestinal parasites and was used until pretty
recently to to do so in some areas of the world,
so he had his own medicine with them. He had
a little medicine kit. He was also well dressed for
the chili spring weather in which he died. He wore
a loincloth, leggings, and a jacket, all made from hide.
He sported a woven grass cape and the aforementioned bear
(11:01):
skin hat. He also had some gear with him. He
carried a dagger and a tender kit with a flint
from about hundred and fifty kilometers away, which suggested some
sophisticated copper age trade had gone on. Still, though, you know,
we've figured out a lot, that's a lot of information
about this guy who has been dead for so long,
but fingernails don't really answer questions about who he was, like,
(11:25):
what did he do, and maybe most intriguingly, why did
he die alone in the mountains. So since the body
was found on a traditional herding route, a lot of
folks initially thought that he might have been a shepherd.
He might have been out there tending his herds. But
aside from the grass cloak, which is traditional shepherd's gear,
(11:45):
he didn't have any other equipment. There was no wool,
there was no crook, no dog here, no animals around
him either. So a few other ideas have popped up
over the years, including a shaman you mentioned that one earlier,
although he had no rich objects on his person, a
flint trader but no trade goods, an outlaw that's an
(12:06):
exciting one. Prospector he didn't have any good tools for that,
or a hunter. So a lot of these theories have
sort of come in and out of fashion with no
real definitive answers. But the question of how he died
did get a big push in July two thousand one
when researchers Paul Goffner and Eduard Garterer vehicle announced that
(12:31):
new X rays showed an arrowhead buried in Let's shoulder,
and they couldn't determine at the time how long it
would have taken for that arrowhead to kill him, but
they could say that he had been shot in the back,
So then the plot thickened. In two thousand five went
a garter vehicle and Andrea S. G near Lish of
the Ludwig Maximilian University and Munich announced a sizeable defensive
(12:54):
stab wound that had been found on Utzie's right palm.
It was partly healed. He had received three to eight
days before death. So this information, combined with a CT
scan suggesting Utzy died on an empty stomach led to
a new narrative of Utzy's last days. The iceman had
had a fight, sustained a cut to his hand, and
(13:14):
then fled through this Analis valley toward an alpine pass
before his enemies caught up with him and polished him off.
So yeah, that was the theory for a few years,
and Gossner eventually retired, but he just kept on looking
at old Iceman CT scans. So there's a that's an
Iceman obsession for you, de Blina. But it it ended
(13:35):
up paying off because in two thousand nine, according to
a National and Geographic story by steven S Hall, Gossner
decided that the iceman's empty stomach was really his empty colon,
and his actual stomach looked like it may have been
pushed up under his ribs. So the big question now,
was there anything in it? Because if there was, that
would dramatically change the working narrative. So planned were made
(14:00):
to do a total investigation of the iceman, unlike any
previous examination, really kind of an autopsy performed while the
iceman was in a state of flight melt, and everything
would take place through the Austrian windows you mentioned earlier
made in nineteen so there would be no new incisions,
(14:21):
no damage done to the body. In November two tho,
after a marathon session, researchers came away with one hundred
and forty nine new samples and promptly refroze et sea.
It's likely to take years to analyze all the findings,
but two thousand eleven already showed major work, so by
June two thousand eleven, the iceman's genome had been sequenced,
(14:43):
revealing that he was closely related to Southern Europeans of today,
had lime disease, congenital risk factors for heart disease or stroke,
was lactose intolerant, and had brown hair and brown eyes,
not blue as earlier believed. And in August it came
out in the Journal of Archaeological Science that Letsi had
not in fact died hungry. Within just a few hours
(15:07):
of his death, he had eaten a hearty meal of ibex,
making the old on the run theory really pretty unlikely,
and replacing it with one of a giant lunch, post
lunch relaxation and then suddenly an arrow in the back
and in a quote given to the Iceman Museum. Albert
(15:27):
Zinc of the Institute for Mummies and the Iceman in Bolzano, Italy,
explained that Utsi's stomach had shifted after his death under
his ribs, and that concealed it, of course, during the
earlier examinations. And he also said quote the Iceman wouldn't
have been able to have a large meal under the
heavy stress of a chase. It much more appears that
(15:48):
he considered the situation safe enough to rest and eat
a heavy meal after the strenuous ascent. Shortly afterward, he
could have moved a short distance away from his place
breast and was killed by a surprise ambush from behind.
So there was another major discovery from that two thousand
and ten examination. The body showed a pool of blood
(16:09):
at the back of the brain. This could have been
from a fall after the fatal arrow shot or a
knock in the head. They're not sure. I think the
National Geographic article called it a kudoo grass, perhaps from
Utsi's killer, so who knows. But it's really fascinating to
me that the narrative surrounding this five thousand, three year
(16:29):
old man can change so much in two decades. I
think that's the part of the story that that appeals
to me. And it's just so interesting. It's really easy
to find quotes that are retrospectively of Note two, and
you have examination after examination with new finds, new findings
turning up around every corner. In two thousand five, for instance,
James H. Dixon, Claus Ogle, and Linda L. Hanley wrote
(16:52):
for Scientific American, quote an autopsy would be too destructive
that didn't turn out to be true. And then into
a thousand two in an article titled time to leave
uts the alone for The Lancet, David Sharp wrote, quote,
I cannot help wondering if there will soon be a
limit to what the tiralee and iceman can usefully tell us.
(17:13):
I mean that was back in two thousand two, just
a year after the arrowhead discovery came out, and it
doesn't seem like there are any limits yet. No, not
at all. And you really do find a record similar
to that where big discoveries are made. People wonder if
there's anything else that can possibly be revealed from this
poor guy who's been poked and prodded and studied for
(17:34):
sny years, and then another huge finding comes out, so
We rarely cover pre history topics on this podcast, but
we do often discuss speculative subjects Spring Heeled Jack, the
Mad Trapper, the Sister's Fox, for example. This topic was
so much more science centered than those, but almost just
(17:55):
as speculative, because, for one thing, it's hard to get
much out of and even miraculously preserved five thousand, three
hundred year old body. Also, technology has advanced remarkably in
the twenty years since us he was first found, So
I mean, just imagine if he had been discovered in
the nineteenth century or even the nineteen sixties or nineteen seventies,
(18:16):
it would have been a different story. But what makes
us He's so important to researchers is not just the
fact that his cells aren't all dried up or that
he is more than five thousand years old. He's an
accidental death, and he died unburied, so he kind of
gives a day in the life of picture of the
copper age instead of another study of copper age burials.
(18:38):
He died wearing presumably everyday clothes, carrying everyday objects, having
just eaten his Big I Beck lunch presumably everyday fair.
So even if researchers don't figure out what exactly he
did for a living or the exact rundown of how
he died. He does offer a peek at copper Age
(18:59):
life that we really wouldn't have had otherwise. But this
whole thing started because of news of zs girlfriend. So
what was her deal? Well, according to Discovery News, a
female skeleton was found during the construction of a kindergarten
in Italy. It was a near a favorite vacation spot
of the late Pope John Paul the Second and current
Pope Benedict the sixteenth. So the site is near South Tyrol,
(19:22):
just a few hundred miles away from where Letsi was found,
and the skeleton is approximately the same age as Letsy.
Thus why she has a couple of nicknames, and one
of the main ones is A's girlfriend. So, now that
we've talked about both the iceman and the Iceman's girlfriend,
I think that's a good point to transition to listener mail.
(19:46):
So we got a letter from Adam, and we should
just note first of all that it is a letter
written on the back of a um like a little
coloring chart for St. Nicholas Day. It's kind of like
a little devil with a a poker and everything. Adam
(20:06):
wrote first a note about the stationary I live in
the Czech Republic, which is an hour's drive north of Prague,
that the town he lives in. I'm from Oregon, but
I've been teaching English to little children here for several years.
This paper I use as an example in a lesson
about colors because it is pretty colorful red, orange, yellow, black. Um.
(20:29):
But he also mentioned that St. Nicholas Day is a
big holiday in the Czech Republic. Um it's on December six,
and we just missed it not too long ago. I
consider doing an episode on St. Nicholas for this year's
UM Christmas themed podcast. Much requested. It is much requested.
Maybe some other time, but anyway. Adam also sent us
(20:50):
a pack of Empress CC playing cards, and that's why
I decided to read this listener meal since another Austrian
story or Austro Hungarian Empire story. So um, thank you.
Maybe at Deplina and I will have a round of
Crazy Eights or something after we finished recording, but we
(21:10):
have one more little bit of information on at Sea
before we leave. You guys, and you won't want to
miss this it's a curse, because of what kind of
mummy story would be complete without a curse? Is so true?
So according to a two thousand five BBC articles, seven
people connected to the mummy have died, some not far
(21:31):
from where UTSI was found, including Helmett Simon who died
in a winter storm. And of course many many people
have worked with LETSI over the years, and no study
has been done on their rate of survival as it
was done for the King tut curse. But maybe that's next. Yeah,
maybe we'll We'll stay tuned on this one. And as
(21:51):
I think we've mentioned on maybe the McBeth curse episode,
I hope that curses like this don't extend to podcasters.
Knock on wood, uh to Blina is like I didn't
know what I was getting into. Um. Anyway, we'll leave
on that note, vicious luck, And if you have anything
else you want to share about the Iceman, you can
(22:14):
email us that history podcast at how stuff works dot com.
We're also on Twitter at Myston History, and we are
on Facebook. And if you want to learn a little
more about another famous curse, I wrote an article several
years ago called is there really a curse on King
Tut's tomb and as I mentioned, that's a curse that
has been studied. There's statistical analysis relating to it, so
(22:37):
you can look that one up by searching for King
Tut on our homepage at www dot how stuff works
dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast,
Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as
we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.
(22:57):
The house Stuff Works iPhone app has a ride downloaded
toy on iTunes.
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Fair Dowdy and I'm Deblina choklate boarding and while
Debilina and I were preparing our end of the year
historical news episodes, Debilina let me know about a story
(00:24):
I had missed in two eleven. Let's see, the Iceman
had a girlfriend. I know this was news to me,
so it's not a situation like another big news story
from eleven one that I did manage to catch. The
Roman Era Romeo and Juliette of Medina, who are two
skeletons found kind of romantically buried next to each other,
(00:46):
holding hands, staring into each other's face. Archaeologists have not
unearthed a lady at sea lying next to the iceman,
which is what I was imagining. I was thinking, how
have they missed another ice Boddie there since nineteen? I mean,
more importantly, how have you missed it? Because I didn't
realize this, but Sarah Dowdy has an Utsi obsession. It's
(01:07):
not a Nutzi obsession. You have a crush on the iceman. No,
that would just be Groad. He's five thousand years old.
I mean, he's an interesting guy, and I think that
interest will be conveyed later in this episode. That first,
to clear up matters on Nutsy's girlfriend. She's just in
the same general area and from the same general time period,
(01:30):
but we're going to talk about her a little more
at the end of the episode. Well. Researching that story though,
to Blean and I realized that has really been where
was kind of a banner year for Iceman News in general.
There were theories that came out about how he lived
and how he died that completely turned earlier theories upside down.
(01:51):
So how about a new episode, an entire episode on
everybody's favorite copper age man, including I mean, he's got
to be your favorite copper age and to if you
narrow it down like that, He's definitely falls into that
category for me. But it's just an interesting story too.
I mean, it spans five thousand, three hundred years with
all these twists and turns and a deep freeze in
(02:13):
the middle of course. So we usually start off these
podcasts with, um, you know, the early years of our subject.
We can't exactly do that for this episode, so we
will start with the discovery of Utsee instead, which happened
September nineteenth. Two German hikers Erica and Helmett Simon, were
out enjoying some fine weather in the up Stall Alps,
(02:37):
near the border of Austria and Italy, and they decided
to take a little shortcut and wound up walking past
a gully filled with melted snow. And of course there's
all this white snow, white ice everywhere. But something brown
caught their eye and they thought maybe it was trash,
(02:57):
and they went over and looked at it. No, it
was much more horrifying than that. It was a dead
body with a few pieces of birch bark around it,
so how scary. They figured it was a dead hiker,
someone who had gotten lost in the gully in recent years,
something like that, something very alarming. So the Simons took
a photo and then they left to report their findings
(03:19):
to the authorities. The next day, men with drills arrived
to chip away the ice, still holding the body's lower
torso and legs, so, not realizing that this was a
stunningly rare archaeological find, they damaged the body's hip and
had to abandon their efforts as the weather started to
turn bad. So by the next day some people were
(03:39):
starting to notice that this body was not clothed in
like hiker gear from the eighties or something. It was
then some decidedly old fashioned looking garments. Still, though, nobody
really had much time to think because the weather was
getting worse and worse and it was making the extraction
a real nightmare. But by September twenty three the body
(04:00):
was finally removed, and of course no archaeologists were present
to witness it because they didn't think that this was
an archaeological matter at the at that time. There was
one lucky catch though, The whole thing was filmed by
the Innsbruck University Institute of Forensic Medicine, which has really
been a useful document for researchers later on. The frozen corps,
(04:23):
along with some of the string and hide and the
acts near his body were then flown to another area
of Austrian were ordered under the direction of the local prosecutor,
to the Institute of Forensic Medicine. So at this point
everybody is still operating under the assumption that this was
not an ancient body, it was a poor, unfortunate hiker,
(04:44):
and it wasn't until six days after the mummy was
found that an archaeologist was finally summoned in to check
things out. It was Conrad Spindler of Innsbruck University, and
after reviewing the body and the acts, he came out
and said he he was sure that it was at
least four thousand years old. So of course this sort
(05:06):
of changed the situation, change matters a bit, and authorities
started trying to figure out who was actually in charge
of the body because we mentioned earlier that the Simons
had been hiking near the Austrian Italian border, and of
course the presence of glaciers can make border determination a
little bit tricky sometimes. Just a few weeks after the discovery,
(05:27):
a new border study came out that said definitively the
find had been located not in Austria but in Italy,
only ninety two from the border, so that changed things
a little bit. Still, the province of South te Roll,
now responsible for the body, was content to allow the
first forensic examinations to take place in Austria. Scientists at
(05:49):
Ennsbruck cut the iceman's torso and also made cuts on
his back, the top of the skull and his legs,
so they've kind of destroyed parts of the body a little. Yeah.
Researchers today call those invasive procedures the Austrian windows. And
in nineteen they went back into Once weather got better
(06:10):
and everything they had to wait about a year. They
went back and a few other key artifacts were recovered
at the scene, like a fingernail, a bear skin, hat,
some hair, some grasses, and Sea fourteen analysis also later
confirmed spindler suspicion that the mummy was at least four
thousand years old. Turned out he was a lot older
(06:31):
than that. As we've already mentioned, it had been about
five thousand, three hundred years since this Copper age guy
had died out there on the ice. That made him
older than the Pharaoh's, older than most of the bog
bodies in Europe, so truly a unique fine for archaeologists.
The Iceman's Great Age made the media go crazy. I mean,
(06:54):
you can probably remember Iceman specials on TV from years ago,
plus all questions about him. Who was he, how did
he die? Was he a shepherd, a shaman or an outlaw?
Was he a vegetarian? Was he sacrificed? Some speculated that
he was a hoax, maybe an Egyptian or Peruvian mummy
stuck in the ice. Others realized he was more than
(07:15):
just a passing news story, and that he needed a name.
Viennese journalist Carl Wendel was the first to coin the
name Utsie, from the valley where the body came from.
But it wasn't just Utsie's great age and the mystery
surrounding his life and death that made him such an
impressive useful find. He was what the South Tyrol Museum
(07:36):
of Archaeology calls a wet mummy, which means a mummy
whose cells aren't desiccated. So normally you would think of
Egyptian mummies they're kind of almost like dust, and um
Utsi's non dust like makeup means that he could be
subjected to scientific procedures without just crumbling away. So after
(07:58):
all of these years, more than five thousand years, he's
still a bit elastic. You can kind of perform living
human or recently dead human type refutures on him. So
over the next decade that's he had X rays, CT scans,
studies of his mitochondrial DNA, bone and tooth analysis, and
a thorough analysis of any pollen on in or near
(08:21):
his body, and so bit by bit, this picture of
the iceman started to emerge. They found out he was
five ft two. He had been raised in the Azarco
River Valley but lived in the Venosta Valley. He was
old for a copper aged man, so he was about
forty five years old, and he had the aches and
pains to prove it. He had healed rib fractures, healed
(08:44):
broken nose, worn down molars, but no tooth decay. I
find that quite impressive. I think there's maybe a secret
there to be learned or something. No Coca cola or
something in his But he had hardened arteries also. So
he also had bow real lines on his fingernails, and
those meant that he had had some kind of major
(09:07):
stress or illness eight weeks, thirteen weeks, in sixteen weeks
before he died. Sometimes if you go through um some
serious illness, your fingernails stopped growing and it leaves behind
this little line. He also had tattoos covering his body,
but not decorative tattoos. They were small charcoal crosses and lines,
and they were located on the knees, ankles, wrists, in steps, calves,
(09:31):
lower back, you know places where if you were a
forty five year old, especially a forty five year old
copper age man, he might have some chronic pain, and
some of these spots even correspond to acupuncture points, so
researchers really do believe that they were some kind of
remedy for for pain he was experiencing. His copper acts
(09:54):
probably meant that he was high status, but the high
levels of arsenic in his body also suggest that he
might have been directly involved in copper metalworking. He had
a few genetic anomalies um including missing twelve ribs and
no wisdom teeth, and a few ailments too. He had
a whip worm infestation and possibly fleet I think a
(10:16):
couple flea bodies were found on his person, no big
surprise there. But he also might have been able or
might have been equipped to handle at least the whipworm infestation.
Among his gear where these hide strips with birch fungus attached,
and birch fungus is uh. It has antibiotic properties that
(10:38):
can help fight intestinal parasites and was used until pretty
recently to to do so in some areas of the world,
so he had his own medicine with them. He had
a little medicine kit. He was also well dressed for
the chili spring weather in which he died. He wore
a loincloth, leggings, and a jacket, all made from hide.
He sported a woven grass cape and the aforementioned bear
(11:01):
skin hat. He also had some gear with him. He
carried a dagger and a tender kit with a flint
from about hundred and fifty kilometers away, which suggested some
sophisticated copper age trade had gone on. Still, though, you know,
we've figured out a lot, that's a lot of information
about this guy who has been dead for so long,
but fingernails don't really answer questions about who he was, like,
(11:25):
what did he do, and maybe most intriguingly, why did
he die alone in the mountains. So since the body
was found on a traditional herding route, a lot of
folks initially thought that he might have been a shepherd.
He might have been out there tending his herds. But
aside from the grass cloak, which is traditional shepherd's gear,
(11:45):
he didn't have any other equipment. There was no wool,
there was no crook, no dog here, no animals around
him either. So a few other ideas have popped up
over the years, including a shaman you mentioned that one earlier,
although he had no rich objects on his person, a
flint trader but no trade goods, an outlaw that's an
(12:06):
exciting one. Prospector he didn't have any good tools for that,
or a hunter. So a lot of these theories have
sort of come in and out of fashion with no
real definitive answers. But the question of how he died
did get a big push in July two thousand one
when researchers Paul Goffner and Eduard Garterer vehicle announced that
(12:31):
new X rays showed an arrowhead buried in Let's shoulder,
and they couldn't determine at the time how long it
would have taken for that arrowhead to kill him, but
they could say that he had been shot in the back,
So then the plot thickened. In two thousand five went
a garter vehicle and Andrea S. G near Lish of
the Ludwig Maximilian University and Munich announced a sizeable defensive
(12:54):
stab wound that had been found on Utzie's right palm.
It was partly healed. He had received three to eight
days before death. So this information, combined with a CT
scan suggesting Utzy died on an empty stomach led to
a new narrative of Utzy's last days. The iceman had
had a fight, sustained a cut to his hand, and
(13:14):
then fled through this Analis valley toward an alpine pass
before his enemies caught up with him and polished him off.
So yeah, that was the theory for a few years,
and Gossner eventually retired, but he just kept on looking
at old Iceman CT scans. So there's a that's an
Iceman obsession for you, de Blina. But it it ended
(13:35):
up paying off because in two thousand nine, according to
a National and Geographic story by steven S Hall, Gossner
decided that the iceman's empty stomach was really his empty colon,
and his actual stomach looked like it may have been
pushed up under his ribs. So the big question now,
was there anything in it? Because if there was, that
would dramatically change the working narrative. So planned were made
(14:00):
to do a total investigation of the iceman, unlike any
previous examination, really kind of an autopsy performed while the
iceman was in a state of flight melt, and everything
would take place through the Austrian windows you mentioned earlier
made in nineteen so there would be no new incisions,
(14:21):
no damage done to the body. In November two tho,
after a marathon session, researchers came away with one hundred
and forty nine new samples and promptly refroze et sea.
It's likely to take years to analyze all the findings,
but two thousand eleven already showed major work, so by
June two thousand eleven, the iceman's genome had been sequenced,
(14:43):
revealing that he was closely related to Southern Europeans of today,
had lime disease, congenital risk factors for heart disease or stroke,
was lactose intolerant, and had brown hair and brown eyes,
not blue as earlier believed. And in August it came
out in the Journal of Archaeological Science that Letsi had
not in fact died hungry. Within just a few hours
(15:07):
of his death, he had eaten a hearty meal of ibex,
making the old on the run theory really pretty unlikely,
and replacing it with one of a giant lunch, post
lunch relaxation and then suddenly an arrow in the back
and in a quote given to the Iceman Museum. Albert
(15:27):
Zinc of the Institute for Mummies and the Iceman in Bolzano, Italy,
explained that Utsi's stomach had shifted after his death under
his ribs, and that concealed it, of course, during the
earlier examinations. And he also said quote the Iceman wouldn't
have been able to have a large meal under the
heavy stress of a chase. It much more appears that
(15:48):
he considered the situation safe enough to rest and eat
a heavy meal after the strenuous ascent. Shortly afterward, he
could have moved a short distance away from his place
breast and was killed by a surprise ambush from behind.
So there was another major discovery from that two thousand
and ten examination. The body showed a pool of blood
(16:09):
at the back of the brain. This could have been
from a fall after the fatal arrow shot or a
knock in the head. They're not sure. I think the
National Geographic article called it a kudoo grass, perhaps from
Utsi's killer, so who knows. But it's really fascinating to
me that the narrative surrounding this five thousand, three year
(16:29):
old man can change so much in two decades. I
think that's the part of the story that that appeals
to me. And it's just so interesting. It's really easy
to find quotes that are retrospectively of Note two, and
you have examination after examination with new finds, new findings
turning up around every corner. In two thousand five, for instance,
James H. Dixon, Claus Ogle, and Linda L. Hanley wrote
(16:52):
for Scientific American, quote an autopsy would be too destructive
that didn't turn out to be true. And then into
a thousand two in an article titled time to leave
uts the alone for The Lancet, David Sharp wrote, quote,
I cannot help wondering if there will soon be a
limit to what the tiralee and iceman can usefully tell us.
(17:13):
I mean that was back in two thousand two, just
a year after the arrowhead discovery came out, and it
doesn't seem like there are any limits yet. No, not
at all. And you really do find a record similar
to that where big discoveries are made. People wonder if
there's anything else that can possibly be revealed from this
poor guy who's been poked and prodded and studied for
(17:34):
sny years, and then another huge finding comes out, so
We rarely cover pre history topics on this podcast, but
we do often discuss speculative subjects Spring Heeled Jack, the
Mad Trapper, the Sister's Fox, for example. This topic was
so much more science centered than those, but almost just
(17:55):
as speculative, because, for one thing, it's hard to get
much out of and even miraculously preserved five thousand, three
hundred year old body. Also, technology has advanced remarkably in
the twenty years since us he was first found, So
I mean, just imagine if he had been discovered in
the nineteenth century or even the nineteen sixties or nineteen seventies,
(18:16):
it would have been a different story. But what makes
us He's so important to researchers is not just the
fact that his cells aren't all dried up or that
he is more than five thousand years old. He's an
accidental death, and he died unburied, so he kind of
gives a day in the life of picture of the
copper age instead of another study of copper age burials.
(18:38):
He died wearing presumably everyday clothes, carrying everyday objects, having
just eaten his Big I Beck lunch presumably everyday fair.
So even if researchers don't figure out what exactly he
did for a living or the exact rundown of how
he died. He does offer a peek at copper Age
(18:59):
life that we really wouldn't have had otherwise. But this
whole thing started because of news of zs girlfriend. So
what was her deal? Well, according to Discovery News, a
female skeleton was found during the construction of a kindergarten
in Italy. It was a near a favorite vacation spot
of the late Pope John Paul the Second and current
Pope Benedict the sixteenth. So the site is near South Tyrol,
(19:22):
just a few hundred miles away from where Letsi was found,
and the skeleton is approximately the same age as Letsy.
Thus why she has a couple of nicknames, and one
of the main ones is A's girlfriend. So, now that
we've talked about both the iceman and the Iceman's girlfriend,
I think that's a good point to transition to listener mail.
(19:46):
So we got a letter from Adam, and we should
just note first of all that it is a letter
written on the back of a um like a little
coloring chart for St. Nicholas Day. It's kind of like
a little devil with a a poker and everything. Adam
(20:06):
wrote first a note about the stationary I live in
the Czech Republic, which is an hour's drive north of Prague,
that the town he lives in. I'm from Oregon, but
I've been teaching English to little children here for several years.
This paper I use as an example in a lesson
about colors because it is pretty colorful red, orange, yellow, black. Um.
(20:29):
But he also mentioned that St. Nicholas Day is a
big holiday in the Czech Republic. Um it's on December six,
and we just missed it not too long ago. I
consider doing an episode on St. Nicholas for this year's
UM Christmas themed podcast. Much requested. It is much requested.
Maybe some other time, but anyway. Adam also sent us
(20:50):
a pack of Empress CC playing cards, and that's why
I decided to read this listener meal since another Austrian
story or Austro Hungarian Empire story. So um, thank you.
Maybe at Deplina and I will have a round of
Crazy Eights or something after we finished recording, but we
(21:10):
have one more little bit of information on at Sea
before we leave. You guys, and you won't want to
miss this it's a curse, because of what kind of
mummy story would be complete without a curse? Is so true?
So according to a two thousand five BBC articles, seven
people connected to the mummy have died, some not far
(21:31):
from where UTSI was found, including Helmett Simon who died
in a winter storm. And of course many many people
have worked with LETSI over the years, and no study
has been done on their rate of survival as it
was done for the King tut curse. But maybe that's next. Yeah,
maybe we'll We'll stay tuned on this one. And as
(21:51):
I think we've mentioned on maybe the McBeth curse episode,
I hope that curses like this don't extend to podcasters.
Knock on wood, uh to Blina is like I didn't
know what I was getting into. Um. Anyway, we'll leave
on that note, vicious luck, And if you have anything
else you want to share about the Iceman, you can
(22:14):
email us that history podcast at how stuff works dot com.
We're also on Twitter at Myston History, and we are
on Facebook. And if you want to learn a little
more about another famous curse, I wrote an article several
years ago called is there really a curse on King
Tut's tomb and as I mentioned, that's a curse that
has been studied. There's statistical analysis relating to it, so
(22:37):
you can look that one up by searching for King
Tut on our homepage at www dot how stuff works
dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast,
Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as
we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.
(22:57):
The house Stuff Works iPhone app has a ride downloaded
toy on iTunes.
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