We have talked about the Iceman in the past but he is so fascinating that I think he deserves to be discussed further. For those of you that don't know who I am talking about, here is a little background. In 1991 a couple of German tourists were walking in the Oetz Valley and came across a body. It turned out that the body was that of a 5,600 year old man that had been preserved in a glacier. The body was still dressed in goatskin leggings and a grass cape. He carried a copper axe and a quiver that was still full of arrows. Since the day of his discovery, the Iceman has been residing in a refrigerated unit at the South Tyrol Archaeological Museum in Bolzano, after having been studied by scientists.

So here we are, 15 years later. What do we know now that we didn't know before about our frozen friend. Actually he was quite advanced for his time. It is believed that he lived an agricultural life. This was postulated from the different seeds found in his clothing. It seems he ate a lot of cereal grains. Not only that but cereal grains were found in his colon. But cereal was not the only thing in his diet. It was found that he also ate goat meat. So what was this guy doing in the mountains? I say the mountains because it is believed that the glacier came down from there into the valley where he was found. Could he have been on a recreational hunting trip or was this more ominous? Maybe he was exiled and had to make his way to some other place?

I guess that the reason he was where he was, doesn't really matter. The thing that matters the most in this case, is the fact that our poor friend was murdered. Somehow an examination that had been conducted on the body had failed to turn up the fact that an arrowhead was embedded in an area of the body that would have caused extreme blood loss. Now why would anyone want to shoot an arrow into the Iceman? I guess it could have been robbers. Maybe someone wanted that nice shinny copper ax. Maybe it was a territorial thing. Some one or ones could have felt that the Iceman was trespassing on their territory.

Man doesn't seem to have changed much in his war like nature. Today if you walk through certain places, instead of an arrow in the back, you will get a bullet in the brain. The Iceman must have been able to get away from his original attackers. The man still had his ax and all his arrows and clothes. I think that we can safely assume that he died some time later after the attack. This means to me that he probably didn't fight but was able to get away, but this is disputed by some who state that he had a wound in his hand so he must have been in hand to hand combat. Why wouldn't he have fought? He may have been so outnumbered that fighting was not an option, but we can also assume he didn't fight because he had a full quiver of arrows and no one has said anything about finding human blood on the ax.

The iceman was not a well man. He stood at about 5 feet 2.5 inches tall. His age was figured at about 46 years. He was arthritic and had a bad case of whipworm. Doctors that examined the body could tell that the Iceman had been seriously sick at least three times in the last several months of his life. It had been found that he had been involved in the smelting of copper because his hair contained high levels of copper and arsenic.

It is interesting to note that the people that found him thought that they had found the body of a climber that was perhaps anywhere from a few years old to ten years. It never occurred to them that they were looking back into history over 5,000 years. Who could blame them, the body didn't seem that old, although you have to admit that it would have been dressed strangely for that time. The fact is that this type of find is so rare, that in all fairness, it would never had occurred to anyone except a trained archeologist that this could be a stone age man.

It is believed that the very last meal the Iceman ate was venison. Scientists have figured this out by checking the contents of his intestines. They also learned that he had eaten Ibex meat. Supposedly this was a deluxe diet for someone of this time period. It's funny, but it took almost 10 years to discover that the poor guy died from an arrow wound. I can't figure out how they missed it? They were saying that the cold killed him or possibly hunger, no even noticed that there was an arrow in his shoulder. I guess this happened because the body was shrunken and shriveled from the thousands of years of being frozen. It wasn't as if the arrow and shaft were sticking out, I think that they would have noticed that, hopefully, no it was just a two centimeter stone arrowhead that was in his shoulder. The estimate now is the the Iceman's death took 3 to 10 hours after he was shot, had paralyzed his left arm and was an extremely painful death.

I am not so sure about the 3 to ten hour estimate, after all, he seemed to have eaten venison, most possibly after that. Another thing that has to strike us is the age of the Iceman. If his age has been predicted correctly at 46 years, he was extremely old for that time. Age estimates go as high as 50 years old. This is at a time when reaching 30 years old was quite an accomplishment. He lived in a time where a technological break through was taking place. People were switching from stone tools to metal ones. It must have been quite exciting.

Now for the irony. The man that had found the Iceman disappeared in the Alps and a team of 95 rescuers searched for him. Could it be that some day this poor guy will land up in the valley, pushed there by the glacier and some tourist will come along, say in 5,000+ years and find his body? Some coincidences are just too strange to ponder. No this won't happen because his frozen body has been found. Some people are saying that the Iceman is cursed because several of the people that examined the body have died, but we are talking about 15 years. Over a period of time people die and that is the sum of it.

Will we ever find another one of these bodies, perhaps even older? It is possible, the glacier has many secrets. Perhaps some day in the distant future a plane will come out of the glacier with the pilot still in the seat.