THE MAN FROM THE ICE

Not every couple on vacation comes across a dead body, let alone a deep-frozen one. But this is precisely what happened on Thursday, September 19, 1991 in the Tyrolean Alps by Helmut and Erika Simon. They had just crossed the Hauslabjoch Pass, which would bring them down to Italy, when they noticed a body protruding from the ice. Reporting their find to the nearest mountain center, they proceeded on their trip, little knowing what would follow.

Tyrol Alps Stock Photo

The manager of the center notified both the Italian and Austrian police, as well as the mountain rescue chief for the area. The following day the Austrian police arrived at the Pass and began chiseling out the body, which lay in a natural hollow covered by the remains of a glacier. A suggestion that it was a man who had disappeared in 1941 was belied by the collection of ancient-looking objects found with the body, including skin clothing and an axe, apparently with an iron blade.

Stock Photo

Of course, wide speculation abounded from local mountaineers to experts in local folk-culture. Early estimates claimed the body’s age ranged from 500 to 3K years. The body was finally released from the ice on September 23 and sent to the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Innsbruck, Austria. The corpse turned out to be of a man over 40 who had apparently died of exposure. Konrad Spindler, Professor of Archaeology at Innsbruck, believed the axe had a bronze rather than an iron blade, and speculated that the body was at least 4K years old.

Initial radio carbon tests on grass samples found with the body suggested an even earlier date – somewhere between 2,600 BC and 2,900 BC. Excavations at the site revealed an amazing repertoire of equipment carried by a prehistoric man going about his business: a pair of grass-lined leather shoes; a fur hood; a patchwork jacket made of deer fur; fur leggings; a leather apron; a woven-grass cloak; a thong with a stone pendant; a goat-fur rucksack; a net; a beaker made of birch bark; a bow; a copper axe with wooden handle; a fur quiver stuffed with 12 wooden arrow shafts; two arrows complete with flint arrowheads and an arrow repair kit; flint and bone tools; and a calf’s-leather pouch containing a fire-making kit.

Artifacts found with Otzi

It soon became clear that the iceman, dubbed “Otzi” by the press, was one of the greatest archaeological finds of the century. This brought about an undignified row between Italy and Austria as to ownership of Otzi’s body. Once the archaeological importance of the find had been appreciated, the press on both sides of the Alps trumpeted a battle of words over the frozen corpse.

It is difficult to determine border lines through the snowy terrain of the Alps but it was agreed, after a new survey specially commissioned to solve the problem, that the body was found just within the Italian side of the border. Eventually the authorities of the North Tyrol (Austrian) and South Tyrol (Italian) came to an agreement that Otzi could remain in Innsbruck until the scientific studies were completed.

Wild theories abounded, including one woman who claimed it was her husband’s body, who went missing in the 1970’s; and then there was a Viennese gay magazine that started a rumor that Otzi was the world’s oldest known passive homosexual, while his skin clothing surely revealed him to be a “leather queen.” The claim was also made that Otzi’s penis was missing. When Otzi’s genitals were examined in April 1993, his penis proved to be there after all, shrunk to about 5 centimeters – quite a creditable length after 5K years of deep-freezing.

These stories are, no doubt, only the small beginnings of a popular publishing industry on the iceman that will come to rival that on Tutankhmanu. The speculations of academics themselves have sometimes lacked restraint, even turning at times to the bizarre. With this kind of speculation coming from the academic world, it may only be a matter of time before a book is published claiming that Otzi was an alien who landed on the Alps in a spaceship!!!!