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Ancient Iceman’s Death Analyzed
Since he was found by hikers in 1991 frozen in the Ötztal Alps in Italy, the 5300 year old Oetzi the Iceman has been a bit of a mystery – in fact he has been described as the world’s oldest murder case. Now his genome has been sequenced, while we still don’t know how he died, we perhaps know a bit more about how he lived.
© South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology
Oetzi lived in the Copper Age, and his genome shows that he probably had brown eyes, belonged to blood group O and was lactose intolerant. He probably had a genetic tendency towards coronary heart disease, which explains his advanced arteriosclerosis despite his healthy lifestyle, and was carrying Lyme disease. While he was found in the Alps, he was more closely related to people from Sardinia, perhaps from prehistoric times.
