by Joe Knight

Created on: May 15, 2007

Who Killed the Iceman?

Little did a pair of hikers know in 1991 that they would literally stumble upon one of the greatest scientific enigmas of the 20th century.

In September 1991, German hikers Helmut and Ericka Simon were enjoying a hike in the Otzal region of the Alps While hiking through Tisenjoch Pass, Mr. Simon spotted a human body lying in the snow. "My husband said, Look what's lying there', and I said Oh, it's a body'. Then my husband took a photograph, just one, the last we had left in the camera. We thought that it was a mountain climber or a skier who had an accident perhaps 10 years previously".

What they had chanced upon was one of the most extraordinary finds in modern archeology. A mummy from the Stone Age - preserved under a sheet of ice for over five- thousand years. And it appears that he may have been murdered.

Named after the region of the Alps in which he was found, Otzi (rhymes with "tootsie") was an enigma from the moment he was found. Was he a mountaineer or skier who had become stranded and died from exposure? Was he just another Alpine fatality? Local authorities evaluated the scene, and since weather delayed the arrival of the forensics team, ski poles, ice picks and a jackhammer were used to free the body and artifacts found with the remains. Only when an archeologist from the University of Innsbruck saw the copper ax was the truth realized. Archeologist Dr. Konrad Spindler realized that the copper ax was four-thousand years olda relic of the Neolithic age. The Neolithic era was the age when stone tools began to give way to metal tools. It was also the time when agriculture was augmenting the hunting-and-gathering lifestyle typical of the time. Before Otzi was found, archeologists had few items to reconstruct what life may have been like four thousand years ago; however, the glacier's freezing temperature preserved much of Otzi's tools and clothing, not to mention Otzi himself. Although some of the artifacts were destroyed during the recovery of Otzi, what has been recovered has provided a wealth of knowledge about Neolithic man.

Life in the Neolithic Age

The origins of the history of the European Neolithic age are closely connected to post-glacial climate and forest development. The increasing temperature resulting from glacial recession cause a remarkable change in the local flora and fauna; therefore, the Mediterranean zone became the center of the first cultural modifications leading from the previous hunter-and-food-gatherers to

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