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Posted: 12-08-2003 20:13 Post subject: Iceman Was Murdered!

from Yahoo

'Iceman' was murdered, science sleuths say
By Tim Friend, USA TODAY

The 5,300-year-old "Iceman" discovered in 1991 in the Italian Alps was killed by one or more assailants in a fight that lasted at least two days, shows evidence obtained by sophisticated DNA testing and old-fashioned detective work.

Scientists initially presumed that the Stone Age Iceman, nicknamed Otzi, was caught in a storm and froze to death. But a new team said Monday that Otzi's case instead has become the world's oldest, and coldest, murder case.

"We've been working round the clock for the last three weeks to get these results," DNA specialist Thomas Loy of the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, told USA TODAY Monday by phone from a laboratory in Bolanzo, Italy. "It was very exciting when the blood samples came back positive for human DNA from four separate individuals."

Otzi's naturally mummified body, the oldest found so far, became a worldwide sensation in 1991 after two Austrian mountain climbers saw it in a thawing glacier at 10,500 feet on the Hauslabjoch Alpine pass at the Italian/Austria border. Nearby artifacts included a copper blade ax, a bearskin cap, shoes of bearskin and woven grass, a quiver of arrows, and a knife

In 2001, an Italian radiologist found an arrowhead embedded in Otzi's shoulder. Otzi had been hit from behind and managed to pull out only the shaft. That discovery led Eduard Egarter, Bolanzo's chief medical examiner and curator of Otzi's body, to look for more evidence of a fight.

Alois Pirpamer, one of the climbers who found Otzi, told Egarter that the Iceman had been clutching a knife in his right hand at the time of the discovery. The knife came loose when the body was pulled from the ice. Pirpamer says he told the Austrian scientists that Otzi was holding the knife, but was ignored.

Egarter matched the knife to the hand and found a deep gash on the hand that had been missed in previous studies. He then found another cut on the left hand and bruises on the torso, as if Otzi had been beaten. Documentary filmmaker Brando Quilici, who was making a second film for the Discovery Channel on the Iceman, suggested bringing in Loy to look for microscopic blood samples that might belong to the attackers. Blood from one person was found on the back of Otzi's cloak, and blood from two people was found on the same arrow in his quiver. More blood was on the knife.

Quilici says the team suspects blood on the back of the cloak may have come from a wounded colleague that Otzi was carrying over his shoulder. Loy says blood of two people was found on the same arrow, suggesting Otzi killed both men and retrieved the arrow.

With Europe gripped in a heat wave, Quilici says ice at the Alpine pass is melting fast. The team will look for more bodies there on Aug. 28. A one-hour documentary about the new findings, Iceman: Hunt for a Killer, airs at 9 p.m. Aug. 24 on the Discovery Channel.

Posted: 12-08-2003 20:18 Post subject:

Wow! A story that only gets more and more fascinating as time goes on. Gonna have to see that program.

Posted: 12-08-2003 20:18 Post subject:

It was the second man, with the bow and arrow, on the icy knoll.

Fred Flintstone was a patsy, he couldn't hit a mammoth three feet in front of him with a big stick.

Sounds like an interesting programme.

Posted: 12-08-2003 20:52 Post subject:

Definitely looking forward to that program, anyone care to speculate on what the fight might have been about, maybe he was carrying treasure of some kind, or perhaps it was something as mundane as a fight over food.

Posted: 12-08-2003 23:55 Post subject:

It doesn't sound like a murder to me. It sounds like a war. Think about it - Otzi shoots at least two different men and, since he retrieved the arrow, presumably killes them.

He's crossing the alps, probably in winter, while carrying a wounded friend. Their enemies catch up with them an Otzi is forced to defend himself with the knife, successfully wounding at least one assailant.

I wouldn't be surprised if more bodies turn up. It sounds to me like a routed army retreating accross the mountains and being harried.

Cujo
(William of Occam would be spining in his grave)

Posted: 13-08-2003 10:34 Post subject:

Posted: 18-08-2003 17:44 Post subject:

Anyone recall the woman who claimed the ice man was actually her father , lost several years ago on a ski-ing trip?Or the news item that claimed several woman had contacted the science team responsible for the ice-man because they hoped frozen samples of ...you know....could be used to inseminate them so they could bear a child by him..am I the only one that recalls that gruesome story..please tell me no..

Posted: 19-08-2003 13:53 Post subject:

He was cleaning his bow an it went off...?

Posted: 23-08-2003 00:22 Post subject:

Posted: 31-10-2003 04:39 Post subject: Iceman Didn't Get Too Far

Iceman Found in Italy Didn't Wander Far
By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - The mysterious 5,200-year-old iceman found in an Alpine glacier was born in a valley in what is now northern Italy and didn't travel far from home, an international team of researchers has concluded.

Indeed, the iceman, known as Oetzi, probably spent his whole life within about 37 miles of the spot near the Italy-Austria border where he was found frozen, according to the team led by Wolfgang Mueller of the Australian National University in Canberra.

Their findings are being reported Friday in the journal Science.

A group of hikers discovered Oetzi's well-preserved body in 1991; since then, he and his clothing and tools have opened a window on the previously little known world of copper-age Europe. Oetzi is currently housed at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, Italy.

Mueller's team, which also includes researchers from the United States and Switzerland, studied the forms of different elements in Oetzi's teeth, bones and intestines and compared them with the types found in water and soil in the region.

Elements such as oxygen and argon are found in different forms, called isotopes, and by comparing the ratio of one isotope to another in body tissue scientists can determine the source of the food or water the person has been consuming. The researchers also looked at the isotopes of strontium and lead in Oetzi.

The findings for tooth enamel can show what a person had been eating and drinking as a child, while bone provides a a similar measure for adults. In addition, the intestines give an indication of activities during a person's final days.

Water in the area where Oetzi was found varies in oxygen isotope ratio because rainfall to the north comes from the cooler and more distant Atlantic Ocean, while that to the south comes from the warmer and closer Mediterranean.

Analysis of Oetzi's tooth enamel indicates that between the ages of 3 and 5 he was drinking water with isotope ratios found only to the south of where he was found frozen.

However, bone analysis of the isotope level ingested as an adult shows a contribution from both northern and southern water sources, something the researchers said could indicate migration into one or more of several nearby valleys.

The isotope ratios for strontium and lead vary depending on the types of rock and soil in an area. The scientists also analyzed the argon ratio of bits of mica found in the intestine, believed to have been ingested as a result of eating stone-ground grain.

Using this data, the team was able to rule out the region south of Bolzano as home to Oetzi, saying instead that he more likely resided in the Schnals or Etsch/Adige valley near Merano or the nearby Ulten, middle Eisack or lower Puster valleys, between Bolzano and the Austrian border.

"Our data indicate that the Iceman spent his entire life in the area south of the discovery site" near the border between Italy and Austria, the team concluded.

They noted that one location, Feldthurns, near Bressanone in the Eisack valley, gives the closest match between local soils and Oetzi's tooth enamel.

Earlier studies have indicated that Oetzi was between 25 and 40 when he died, suffered from arthritis and had an arrowhead embedded in a shoulder, probably the cause of death.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20031030/ap_on_sc/iceman_2

Posted: 31-10-2003 08:25 Post subject:

Mr R.I.N.G's post added to thread started by - oh! - Mr R.I.N.G! Eek Eek

Come on, mate, get yer act tergither!

Posted: 10-11-2003 11:30 Post subject:

BBC version of story here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3227339.stm

Better picture of the body and a nice little map. Smile

Posted: 10-11-2003 11:41 Post subject:

Hmmm...

An unsolvable murder mystery from long ago? Get Patricia Cornwell on the case! She can decide who did it first, spend millions of dollars buying up cave paintings and then impress no-one with her half-assed theory.
Or bring on Derek Acorah to be posessed by the spirit of Oetzi, mysteriously revealing that he was, in fact, an Italian caveman with a scouse accent!

God, it's great to be a critic!
Very Happy

Posted: 13-11-2003 01:02 Post subject:

It would make quite a cool short film, don't you think? Otzi and his friend trying to escape with a bunch of other ice-chaps chasing them over the mountains...

Posted: 13-11-2003 09:01 Post subject: