Otzi the Iceman
A murdered man frozen in an Alpine glacier for 5,300 years, with everything he was carrying.
- When
- Known to
- ± 100 years
- Era
- Bronze Age, Holocene
Discovered in 1991 melting out of a glacier on the Austrian-Italian border, Otzi died around 3300 BCE aged about 45. He carried a copper axe, a longbow and unfinished arrows, a flint dagger, a birch-bark container with embers, and two species of fungus including one with antibacterial properties. He has 61 tattoos, mostly over joints showing wear. He had eaten ibex and einkorn hours before he died, and an arrowhead in his left shoulder severed an artery. Someone killed him.