July 22, 2001. Copyright 2001. Graphic News. All rights reserved.

Cause of death confirmed after 5,300 years

LONDON, July 22, Graphic News: The mystery of the ÒIcemanÓ now appears to be solved. A team of scientists in Italy has concluded that the 5,300-year-old Bronze Age hunter, whose frozen, mummified corpse was discovered a decade ago in the Alps on the Italian-Austrian border, died from a wound caused by an arrow that ripped through his back.

Radiologist Paul Gostner, a member of the team studying the body said the arrowhead had been found under his left shoulder. Gostner said the Iceman could have lived only a few hours after he was wounded. 

The discovery raises the question: was this a Bronze Age murder, was it the result of a feud or fight, or was it an accident -- the equivalent of Neolithic manslaughter?

His superbly preserved corpse is kept in a refrigerated viewing chamber at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano in northern Italy.

The museum was built to house him and the array of weapons and tools found along with him, including a copper axe, bow and flint-stone tipped arrows.

The manÕs well-preserved body was discovered in September 1991 by two German mountaineers after the snout of the Val Senales glacier in the south Tyrol, northern Italy, receded because of global warming.

Nicknamed Oetzi by his discoverers, he was thought to have died of exhaustion at the age of about 45.

Tattoos found on his body are evidence that Europeans practised acupuncture some 2,000 years before the Chinese, scientists say. The tattoos may have formed an ancient acupuncture chart used long before the therapy was developed in the Far East. Most were found on the lumbar spine, knee and ankle and were probably applied to combat muscle and joint pain caused by acute arthritis.
/ENDS
Sources: http://www.iceman.it, Associated Press