Ötzi, also called The Iceman, is the natural mummy of a man who lived between 3350 and 3105 BC. Ötzi’s remains were discovered on 19 September 1991, in the Ötztal Alps (hence the nickname “Ötzi”, German: [œtsi]) at the Austria–Italy border. He is Europe’s oldest known natural human mummy, offering an unprecedented view of Chalcolithic (Copper Age) Europeans.

Because of the presence of an arrowhead embedded in his left shoulder and various other wounds, researchers believe that Ötzi was killed by another person. The nature of his life and the circumstances of his death are the subject of much investigation and speculation. His remains and personal belongings are on exhibit at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, South Tyrol, Italy.

Ötzi was found on 19 September 1991 by two German tourists, at an elevation of 3,210 m (10,530 ft) on the east ridge of the Fineilspitze in the Ötztal Alps on the Austrian–Italian border, near Similaun mountain and the Tisenjoch pᴀss. When the tourists, Helmut and Erika Simon, first saw the body, they both believed that they had happened upon a recently deceased mountaineer.The next day, a mountain gendarme and the keeper of the nearby Similaunhütte first attempted to remove the body, which was frozen in ice below the torso, using a pneumatic drill and ice axes, but bad weather forced them to give up. Within a short time, eight groups visited the site, among whom were mountaineers Hans Kammerlander and Reinhold Messner.

The body was extracted on 22 September and salvaged the following day. It was transported to the office of the medical examiner in Innsbruck, together with other objects found nearby. On 24 September, the find was examined there by archaeologist Konrad Spindler of the University of Innsbruck. He dated the find to be “at least four thousand years old” on the basis of the typology of an axe among the retrieved objects.Tissue samples from the corpse and other accompanying materials were later analyzed at several scientific insтιтutions and their results unequivocally concluded that the remains belonged to someone who had lived between 3359 and 3105 BC, or some 5,000 years ago. More specific estimates find that there was a 66% chance he died between 3239 and 3105 BC, a 33% chance he died between 3359 and 3294 BC, and a 1% chance he died between 3277 and 3268 BC.

At the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye of 1919, the border between North and South Tyrol was defined as the watershed of the rivers Inn and Etsch. Near Tisenjoch, the glacier (which has since retreated) complicated establishing the watershed and the border was drawn too far north. Although Ötzi’s find site drains to the Austrian side, land surveys in October 1991 ultimately proved that the body had been located 92.56 m (101.22 yd) inside Italian territory, which was in consonance with Italy’s original 1919 ownership claim. The province of South Tyrol claimed property rights but agreed to let Innsbruck University finish its scientific examinations. Since 1998, he has been on display at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, the capital of South Tyrol.

The corpse has been extensively examined, measured, X-rayed, and dated. Tissues and intestinal contents have been examined microscopically, as have the items found with the body. In August 2004, frozen bodies of three Austro-Hungarian soldiers killed during the Battle of San Matteo (1918) were found on the mountain Punta San Matteo in Trentino. One body was sent to a museum in the hope that research on how the environment had affected its preservation would help unravel Ötzi’s past.

By the most recent estimates, at the time of his death, Ötzi was 160 cm (5 ft 3 in) tall, weighed about 50 kg (110 lb), and was about 45 years of age. When his body was found, it weighed 13.750 kg (30 lb 5.0 oz).Because the body was covered in ice shortly after his death, it had only partially deteriorated. Initial reports claimed that his penis and most of his scrotum were missing, but this was later shown to be unfounded. Analysis of pollen, dust grains and the isotopic composition of his tooth enamel indicates that he spent his childhood near the present South Tyrol village of Feldthurns, north of Bolzano, but later went to live in valleys about 50 kilometres (31 mi) farther north.

In 2009, a CAT scan revealed that the stomach had shifted upward to where his lower lung area would normally be. Analysis of the contents revealed the partly digested remains of ibex meat, confirmed by DNA analysis, suggesting he had had a meal less than two hours before his death. Wheat grains were also found. It is believed that Ötzi most likely had a few slices of a dried, fatty meat, which came from a wild goat in South Tyrol, Italy. Analysis of Ötzi’s intestinal contents showed two meals (the last one consumed about eight hours before his death), one of chamois meat, the other of red deer and herb bread; both were eaten with roots and fruits. The grain also eaten with both meals was a highly processed einkorn wheat bran, quite possibly eaten in the form of bread. In the proximity of the body, and thus possibly originating from the Iceman’s provisions, chaff and grains of einkorn and barley, and seeds of flax and poppy were discovered, as well as kernels of sloes (small plum-like fruits of the blackthorn tree) and various seeds of berries growing in the wild.

Hair analysis was used to examine his diet from several months before. Pollen in the first meal showed that it had been consumed in a mid-alтιтude conifer forest, and other pollens indicated the presence of wheat and legumes, which may have been domesticated crops. Pollen grains of hop-hornbeam were also discovered. The pollen was very well preserved, with the cells inside remaining intact, indicating that it had been fresh (estimated about two hours old) at the time of Ötzi’s death, which places the event in the spring or early summer. Einkorn wheat is harvested in the late summer, and sloes in the autumn; these must have been stored from the previous year.

High levels of both copper particles and arsenic were found in Ötzi’s hair. This, along with Ötzi’s copper axe blade, which is 99.7% pure copper, has led scientists to speculate that Ötzi was involved in copper smelting.

By examination of the proportions of Ötzi’s tibia, femur and pelvis, it was postulated that Ötzi’s lifestyle included long walks over hilly terrain. This degree of mobility is not characteristic of other Copper Age Europeans. This may indicate that Ötzi was a high-alтιтude shepherd.

Using modern 3D scanning technology, a facial reconstruction has been created for the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, Italy. It shows Ötzi looking old for his 45 years, with deep-set brown eyes, a beard, a furrowed face, and sunken cheeks. He is depicted as looking tired and ungroomed.

Ötzi apparently had Trichuris trichiura (whipworm), an intestinal parasite. During CT scans, it was observed that three or four of his right ribs had been cracked when he had been lying face down after death, or where the ice had crushed his body. One of his fingernails (of the two found) shows three Beau’s lines, indicating he was sick three times in the six months before he died. The last incident, two months before he died, lasted about two weeks. It was also found that his epidermis, the outer skin layer, was missing, a natural process from his mummification in ice. Ötzi’s teeth showed considerable internal deterioration from cavities. These oral pathologies may have been brought about by his grain-heavy, high-carbohydrate diet. DNA analysis in February 2012 revealed that Ötzi was lactose intolerant, supporting the theory that lactose intolerance was still common at that time, despite the increasing spread of agriculture and dairying. Ötzi’s lungs were examined endoscopically and were found to be blackened by soot, probably due to his frequent proximity to open fires for warmth and cooking.

Ötzi had a total of 61 tattoos, consisting of 19 groups of black lines ranging from 1–3 mm (0.039–0.118 in) in width and 7–40 mm (0.28–1.57 in) in length.These include groups of parallel lines running along the longitudinal axis of his body and to both sides of the lumbar spine, as well as a cruciform mark behind the right knee and on the right ankle, and parallel lines around the left wrist. The greatest concentration of markings is found on his legs, which together exhibit 12 groups of lines. A microscopic examination of samples collected from these tattoos revealed that they were created from pigment manufactured out of fireplace ash or soot.This pigment was then rubbed into small linear incisions or punctures. It has been suggested that Ötzi was repeatedly tattooed in the same locations, since the majority of them are quite dark.

Radiological examination of Ötzi’s bones showed “age-conditioned or strain-induced degeneration” corresponding to many tattooed areas, including osteochondrosis and slight spondylosis in the lumbar spine and wear-and-tear degeneration in the knee and especially in the ankle joints. It has been speculated that these tattoos may have been part of pain relief treatments similar to acupressure or acupuncture, though Ötzi lived at least 2,000 years before their previously known earliest use in China (c. 1000 BC). For example, 9 of the 19 groups of his tattoos are located next to, or directly on, acupunctural areas used today, and most of the others are on meridians and other acupunctural regions of the body and over arthritic joints. Ötzi’s abdominal tattoos may have ᴀssuaged the intestinal pain of whipworm, which he is thought to have had.

At one point, it was thought that Ötzi was the oldest tattooed human mummy yet discovered. In 2018, however, tattoos were discovered on nearly contemporaneous Egyptian mummies.

Many of Ötzi’s tattoos originally went unnoticed, since they are difficult to see with the naked eye. In 2015, researchers pH๏τographed the body using noninvasive multispectral techniques to capture images on different light wavelengths that are imperceptible by humans, revealing the remainder of his tattoos.

Ötzi wore a cloak made of woven grᴀss and a coat, a belt, a pair of leggings, a loincloth, and shoes, all made of leather of different skins. He also wore a bearskin cap with a leather chin strap. The shoes were waterproof and wide, seemingly designed for walking across the snow; they were constructed using bearskin for the soles, deer hide for the top panels, and a netting made of tree bark. Soft grᴀss went around the foot and in the shoe and functioned like modern socks. The coat, belt, leggings and loincloth were constructed of vertical strips of leather sewn together with sinew. His belt had a pouch sewn to it that contained a cache of useful items: a scraper, a drill, a flint flake, a bone awl and a dried fungus (see #Tools and equipment below).

The shoes have since been reproduced by a Czech academic, who said that “because the shoes are actually quite complex, I’m convinced that even 5,300 years ago, people had the equivalent of a cobbler who made shoes for other people”. The reproductions were found to consтιтute such excellent footwear that it was reported that a Czech company offered to purchase the rights to sell them. However, a more recent hypothesis by British archaeologist Jacqui Wood is that Ötzi’s shoes were actually the upper part of snowshoes. According to this theory, the item currently interpreted as part of a backpack is actually the wood frame and netting of one snowshoe and animal hide to cover the face.

The leather loincloth and hide coat were made from sheepskin. Genetic analysis showed that the sheep species was nearer to modern domestic European sheep than to wild sheep; the items were made from the skins of at least four animals. Part of the coat was made from a domesticated goat belonging to a mitochondrial haplogroup (a common female ancestor) that inhabits central Europe today. The coat was made from several animals from two different species and was sтιтched together using hides. The leggings were made from domesticated goat leather. A similar set of 5,000-year-old leggings discovered in Schnidejoch, Switzerland, were made from goat leather as well.

Irish and Italian researchers were able to undertake an analysis of the mitochondrial DNA from six different items of the body’s clothing and published their findings in the journal Scientific Reports. These showed that the shoelaces were made from the European genetic population of cattle. The quiver was made from wild roe deer, the fur hat was made from a genetic lineage of brown bear which lives in the region today.