When Ötzi the Iceman was ambushed and killed around 5,300 years ago in the Alps, he may have been going bald and getting fat, a new study suggests.

Ötzi has been famous since German tourists discovered his mummified body in 1991 in an Alpine pᴀss in northern Italy. The latest study is one of many investigating the prehistoric man, including the tools and weapons he carried, his clothing, his last meal, what the climate was like during his lifetime and the route of his last journey before his high-alтιтude murder.

In the new study, researchers studied DNA preserved in Ötzi’s left ileum (part of his pelvis, which also underwent genetic analysis in 2012) and determined that Ötzi, who died in his mid-40s, had a predisposition to male pattern baldness, diabetes and obesity.

The findings also reveal that Ötzi is largely descended from the last wave of immigrants to Europe from Anatolia (present-day Turkey) who brought early farming techniques to the continent some 8,000 years ago.

DNA analysis also indicates that Ötzi had darker skin than previously thought and would have had dark hair, at least before he began to go bald.

Iceman Genome

The new study, published Wednesday (Aug. 16) in the journal Cell Genomics, is a revision of a 2012 study by a different group of scientists; genetic testing was complex and expensive at the time, and the latest researchers have determined that the earlier samples were significantly contaminated with modern DNA.

The team took samples from the same ilium, but used updated genetic techniques to generate a more complete sequence of Ötzi’s genome. They then applied what they had learned about genetics over the past 10 years.

The results show that Ötzi probably looked different than many people thought.

“Ötzi might have had relatively dark skin and a risk of male pattern baldness,” study lead author Ke Wang, an archaeogeneticist at the Max Planck Insтιтute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, told Live Science.

The findings contradict previous ᴀssumptions about the appearance of Ötzi, who is often depicted as a fair-skinned European with long, blond hair. But “the new findings fit better with the mummy’s actual appearance,” Wang said in an email.

Albert Zink, a paleoanthropologist and director of the Insтιтute for Mummy Studies in Italy who co-authored the study, said some of the depictions should be updated. “It’s not urgent, because they are always just an interpretation,” he told Live Science. “But in the future they should consider darkening their skin and hair.”

Ötzi’s genetics also reveal surprising details about his ancestry. Previous research suggested he might have been related to modern Sardinians, but the new analysis shows he had an unusually high level of ancestry from early Anatolian farmers.

These results suggest that Ötzi came from an isolated Alpine population that rarely interbred with other hunter-gatherer groups, Zink said.

Ötzi reconsidered

The latest study is not the first to reᴀssess who Ötzi was and how he died; an archaeological study last year determined that he likely died somewhere far from the ravine where he was found and that his body had been swept there by subsequent movements of the ice.

Lars Pilø, an archaeologist with the Secrets of Ice project who led that research but was not involved in the latest study, told Live Science that the latest study resolved the lingering question about whether Ötzi’s mummy’s skin was its natural shade. (It was.)

However, Pilø does not entirely agree with Ötzi’s baldness. Although Ötzi may have been genetically predisposed to baldness, his mummy’s lack of hair was probably due to the preservation process, he said.

“Ötzi the Iceman keeps on giving us new surprises, which is remarkable as he must be the most researched archaeological find to date,” said Pilø.