BOLZANO, Italy (dpa) – He had worms, blackened lungs, broken ribs and rotten teeth. He suffered from arthritis, diarrhoea, as well as cold and hunger. What ultimately killed him, however, was a 21- centimetre long arrow that perforated his shoulder, tore through nerves and blood vessels and paralysed his arm.
Bleeding profusely while trying to flee his attacker, he probably endured several hours of atrocious pain before being entombed in ice in a desolated land that is today called the Alps.More than 5,300 years after such a miserable and lonely death, the celebrated Ice Man known as “Oetzi” still cannot rest in peace.Since his sensational discovery, dozens of scientists from Italy and Austria have been dissecting his perfectly-preserved body, defrosting him and then freezing him again, extracting samples of skin tissue and examining his tooth enamel.Nothing about his body, not even his private parts, have been spared by scientists, who were rocketed by the fact that what was initially thought to be a lost hiker had, in fact, lived between 3350 and 3100 B.C.“Frozen Fritz”, as he is also known, was initially taken to Innsbruck, Austria, but eventually had to be transferred to Bolzano by refrigerated truck when a long legal dispute established that he had died about 90 metres inside the Italian border.Oetzi was 160.5 centimetres tall and aged between 40 and 45 years old. His remarkably sophisticated shoes – made using bearskin soles, deer hide and tree bark netting – were waterproof. He carried a copper blade axe, a flint dagger, an unfinished bow and 12 half- fabricated and two completed arrows.The fact that he was carrying unfinished tools had led scientists to believe that he had left in a hurry, possibly trying to elude pursuers by taking a route over the main Alpine chain – a choice which was to lead to his doom.According to new studies that were made public last July, however, the man was probably murdered.“All the things that have been published over the past years – that he died because of broken ribs, that he died under the snow, or that he was exhausted, laid down, fell asleep and froze to death – are wrong,” Alex Susanna, director of the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano said at the time.The world’s most famous ice man was found on September 19, 1991, by a German couple that was hiking in the Oetzi Valley.“I saw something brown sticking out of the snow,” Helmut Simon said at the time. What was initially thought to be a gruesome finding was to turn out into one of the most sensational scientific discoveries of all time.Oetzi soon became an international celebrity, honoured by Time magazine and by the leading scientists of the world.To mark the 10th anniversary of his discovery, which takes place on Wednesday, his descendants in South Tyrol have composed a musical honouring him and have built an archaeological park near Bolzano.Thanks to the Internet, his photos are available to anyone in the world.He never could have imagined what the future held in store for him as he lay dying in the snow, 5,300 years ago.
