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, according to 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 have 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 frozen and naturally mummified body the oldest of its kind ever found became a worldwide sensation in 1991 after two mountain climbers stumbled upon it in a thawing glacier at 10,500 feet on the Hauslabjoch Alpine pass, which joins Italy and Austria. Nearby artifacts included a copper blade ax, a bearskin cap, shoes of bearskin and woven grass, and a quiver of arrows.
In 2001, an Italian radiologist found an arrowhead embedded in Otzi's shoulder. He had been shot 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 Austrian mountaineers who found Otzi, told Egarter that the Iceman originally was clutching a knife in his right hand. The knife had been knocked loose when scientists tried to pull the body from the ice. Pirpamer said he told the Austrian scientists but was ignored.
Egarter, however, examined the hand and found a deep gash that had been missed in previous examinations. 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. Blood from a fourth person was found on the knife.
Scientists plan to look for more bodies where Otzi was found. A one-hour documentary about the new findings, Iceman: Hunt for a Killer, airs at 9 p.m. Aug. 24 on the Discovery Channel.
Find this article at: <<http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2003-08-11-iceman-goeth_x.htm>>
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