Otzi The Ice Man
Who is Otzi the ice man?
Otzi is a 5,300 year old man whose corpse was found perfectly preserved by two hikers in the Italian Alps. On September 18, 1991, the two hikers, Erika and Helmut Simon, went on an expedition and decided to climb the twelve thousand foot high Similaun Mountain which is on the border of the Austrian and Italian Alps. That night, instead of returning down the mountain to their hotel, they were forced to camp on the mountain because of dangerous hiking conditions. Little did they know, the next morning they would make a highly important archaeological discovery.
The next day, the couple decided to hike Finail Mountain before returning to their hotel. This mountain is in a unique location because you can stand with one foot in Italy and the other in Austria. On the way back down from their hike, they passed a section of the Niederjoch Glacier which was severely melted and revealed a rocky terrain. At this point, the couple noticed something in the slushy ice. Initially, they did not know what it was, but they soon realized that it was a corpse. The couple thought that it was the body of a person who had a mountain accident and immediately informed the authorities. They had no idea they had stumbled upon the corpse of a 5,300 year old man which would unlock secrets to his past.
