Otzi The Ice Man
How are archaeology and science related to Otzi?
What is archaeology?
The word "archaeology" is Greek and means "the study of what is ancient". More specifically, archaeologists are interested about human history. They discover and analyze human remains to try and understand the history of human culture.
The discovery of Otzi is very important to archaeologists because he is the oldest human mummy ever found which was preserved by freezing.
What happened after Otzi was found?
After the discovery of Otzi by the two hikers, they immediately called the police thinking that they had come across a hiker who had some kind of accident. When the police arrived, they noticed strange things about the body. For example, the body was dressed in animal skins and its skin was not white and waxy, but brown and dry.
The police decided to call an expert, Dr. Rainer Henn, to come and examine the body. Dr. Rainer Henn is a medical examiner. This means that he investigates deaths. After looking at the body, Dr. Henn realized that the cropse was actually a mummy!
Dr. Henn and his team carefully removed the body from the ice to transfer it to the medical school where he worked so he could show other scientists. The site where Otzi was found was also excavated in order to find other artifacts left by Otzi. Once the body was transferred, it had to be kept in a very cold medical room so that it wouldn't thaw. This made sure the mummy was preserved.
Dr. Spindler, an archaeologist, was then invited to study the "ice man". He was very interested in the ax which was found with the ice man. After careful examination, Dr. Spindler decided that the ax was at least 4,000 years old. This inspired scientists to give Otzi a carbon-14 dating test to determine his exact age. They discovered that the archaeologist was correct in is few thousand year old guess. Otzi is 5,300 years old. To put this in perspective, Otzi lived around 700 years prior to the construction of The Great Pyramid in Giza by the Ancient Egyptians.
