Prehistoric mummy found in Ötztal Alps

September 19 1991 — German hikers Erika and Helmut Simon find a well-preserved prehistoric body on the Similaun Glacier in the Tirolean Ötztal Alps, on the Italian-Austrian border (92.56m inside Italy). Radiocarbon-dated to 3300BC, the body is that of a man aged around 45, 1.6m tall and 50kg in weight. Viennese journalist Karl Wendl dubs him Ötzi, after the discovery site, and he becomes known as Ötzi the Iceman. Over 5,300 years ago, Ötzi was crossing the Tisenjoch pass in the Val Senales valley, South Tyrol, where he was murdered and preserved naturally in the ice. He is therefore older than the Egyptian pyramids and Stonehenge. Ötzi lived during the Copper Age, a period of the late Neolithic. He was still using stone tools but owned an innovative and very valuable copper axe. Ötzi is a wet mummy that was mummified naturally in the glacier ice. Most mummies were treated with substances to preserve them after their organs had been removed. Ötzi is unique in that he has been preserved almost in his entirety. At first it is thought that he died in an accident, but in 2001 an X-ray reveals a flint arrowhead in his left shoulder. A 2cm entry wound is discovered in his back. The arrow severed the subclavian artery, indicating that he bled to death within a matter of minutes. Ötzi, who has 61 tattoos, and his artefacts are exhibited at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, Italy. Picture: A reconstruction by scientists and the mummified remains, both on display at the museum.