Ötzi the Iceman, a Copper Age life preserved in ice
- Date
- c. 3300 BCE
- Category
- Science, technology & invention
- Region
- Central Europe (Alps, Italy/Austria)
- Era
- Prehistory
- Significance
In 1991, hikers in the Ötztal Alps on the Italian–Austrian border found a naturally mummified human body melting out of a glacier.
Radiocarbon-dated to around 3300 BCE, 'Ötzi the Iceman' is the best-preserved prehistoric human ever recovered, complete with skin, internal organs, his last meals, and his full kit of clothing and equipment. His possessions offer an unmatched snapshot of everyday Copper Age life: layered hide and grass clothing, a bow and arrows, a flint dagger, birch-bark containers, and, most remarkably, an axe with a blade of 99.7 percent pure copper, whose metal has been traced to ores in central Italy, evidence of long-distance connections. His body carries dozens of tattoos and signs of illness, while an arrowhead lodged in his shoulder and a head wound indicate he was killed, making him also prehistory's most studied murder victim. Ötzi vividly illustrates the technologies, diet, health, trade and even violence of European life on the threshold of the Bronze Age.
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Related science, technology & invention events
- Earliest Egyptian Hieroglyphs at Abydos (Tomb U-j)c. 3250 BCE
- Invention of cuneiform writing at Urukc. 3300–3100 BCE
- Earliest wheeled vehicles in Mesopotamiac. 3300–3000 BCE
- Invention of the wheel and wheeled vehiclesc. 3500 BCE
- Invention of the potter's wheel in Mesopotamiac. 3500 BCE
- Early horse domestication on the Eurasian steppec. 3500 BCE
Further reading
The wider story
A Little History of Science
Warm, jargon-free tour of discovery from Babylonian stargazers to the genome.
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