Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Fair Dowdy and I'm Deblina choklate boarding and while
Speaker 1: Debilina and I were preparing our end of the year
Speaker 1: historical news episodes, Debilina let me know about a story
Speaker 1: I had missed in two eleven. Let's see, the Iceman
Speaker 1: had a girlfriend. I know this was news to me,
Speaker 1: so it's not a situation like another big news story
Speaker 1: from eleven one that I did manage to catch. The
Speaker 1: Roman Era Romeo and Juliette of Medina, who are two
Speaker 1: skeletons found kind of romantically buried next to each other,
Speaker 1: holding hands, staring into each other's face. Archaeologists have not
Speaker 1: unearthed a lady at sea lying next to the iceman,
Speaker 1: which is what I was imagining. I was thinking, how
Speaker 1: have they missed another ice Boddie there since nineteen? I mean,
Speaker 1: more importantly, how have you missed it? Because I didn't
Speaker 1: realize this, but Sarah Dowdy has an Utsi obsession. It's
Speaker 1: not a Nutzi obsession. You have a crush on the iceman. No,
Speaker 1: that would just be Groad. He's five thousand years old.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's an interesting guy, and I think that
Speaker 1: interest will be conveyed later in this episode. That first,
Speaker 1: to clear up matters on Nutsy's girlfriend. She's just in
Speaker 1: the same general area and from the same general time period,
Speaker 1: but we're going to talk about her a little more
Speaker 1: at the end of the episode. Well. Researching that story though,
Speaker 1: to Blean and I realized that has really been where
Speaker 1: was kind of a banner year for Iceman News in general.
Speaker 1: There were theories that came out about how he lived
Speaker 1: and how he died that completely turned earlier theories upside down.
Speaker 1: So how about a new episode, an entire episode on
Speaker 1: everybody's favorite copper age man, including I mean, he's got
Speaker 1: to be your favorite copper age and to if you
Speaker 1: narrow it down like that, He's definitely falls into that
Speaker 1: category for me. But it's just an interesting story too.
Speaker 1: I mean, it spans five thousand, three hundred years with
Speaker 1: all these twists and turns and a deep freeze in
Speaker 1: the middle of course. So we usually start off these
Speaker 1: podcasts with, um, you know, the early years of our subject.
Speaker 1: We can't exactly do that for this episode, so we
Speaker 1: will start with the discovery of Utsee instead, which happened
Speaker 1: September nineteenth. Two German hikers Erica and Helmett Simon, were
Speaker 1: out enjoying some fine weather in the up Stall Alps,
Speaker 1: near the border of Austria and Italy, and they decided
Speaker 1: to take a little shortcut and wound up walking past
Speaker 1: a gully filled with melted snow. And of course there's
Speaker 1: all this white snow, white ice everywhere. But something brown
Speaker 1: caught their eye and they thought maybe it was trash,
Speaker 1: and they went over and looked at it. No, it
Speaker 1: was much more horrifying than that. It was a dead
Speaker 1: body with a few pieces of birch bark around it,
Speaker 1: so how scary. They figured it was a dead hiker,
Speaker 1: someone who had gotten lost in the gully in recent years,
Speaker 1: something like that, something very alarming. So the Simons took
Speaker 1: a photo and then they left to report their findings
Speaker 1: to the authorities. The next day, men with drills arrived
Speaker 1: to chip away the ice, still holding the body's lower
Speaker 1: torso and legs, so, not realizing that this was a
Speaker 1: stunningly rare archaeological find, they damaged the body's hip and
Speaker 1: had to abandon their efforts as the weather started to
Speaker 1: turn bad. So by the next day some people were
Speaker 1: starting to notice that this body was not clothed in
Speaker 1: like hiker gear from the eighties or something. It was
Speaker 1: then some decidedly old fashioned looking garments. Still, though, nobody
Speaker 1: really had much time to think because the weather was
Speaker 1: getting worse and worse and it was making the extraction
Speaker 1: a real nightmare. But by September twenty three the body
Speaker 1: was finally removed, and of course no archaeologists were present
Speaker 1: to witness it because they didn't think that this was
Speaker 1: an archaeological matter at the at that time. There was
Speaker 1: one lucky catch though, The whole thing was filmed by
Speaker 1: the Innsbruck University Institute of Forensic Medicine, which has really
Speaker 1: been a useful document for researchers later on. The frozen corps,
Speaker 1: along with some of the string and hide and the
Speaker 1: acts near his body were then flown to another area
Speaker 1: of Austrian were ordered under the direction of the local prosecutor,
Speaker 1: to the Institute of Forensic Medicine. So at this point
Speaker 1: everybody is still operating under the assumption that this was
Speaker 1: not an ancient body, it was a poor, unfortunate hiker,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't until six days after the mummy was
Speaker 1: found that an archaeologist was finally summoned in to check
Speaker 1: things out. It was Conrad Spindler of Innsbruck University, and
Speaker 1: after reviewing the body and the acts, he came out
Speaker 1: and said he he was sure that it was at
Speaker 1: least four thousand years old. So of course this sort
Speaker 1: of changed the situation, change matters a bit, and authorities
Speaker 1: started trying to figure out who was actually in charge
Speaker 1: of the body because we mentioned earlier that the Simons
Speaker 1: had been hiking near the Austrian Italian border, and of
Speaker 1: course the presence of glaciers can make border determination a
Speaker 1: little bit tricky sometimes. Just a few weeks after the discovery,
Speaker 1: a new border study came out that said definitively the
Speaker 1: find had been located not in Austria but in Italy,
Speaker 1: only ninety two from the border, so that changed things
Speaker 1: a little bit. Still, the province of South te Roll,
Speaker 1: now responsible for the body, was content to allow the
Speaker 1: first forensic examinations to take place in Austria. Scientists at
Speaker 1: Ennsbruck cut the iceman's torso and also made cuts on
Speaker 1: his back, the top of the skull and his legs,
Speaker 1: so they've kind of destroyed parts of the body a little. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Researchers today call those invasive procedures the Austrian windows. And
Speaker 1: in nineteen they went back into Once weather got better
Speaker 1: and everything they had to wait about a year. They
Speaker 1: went back and a few other key artifacts were recovered
Speaker 1: at the scene, like a fingernail, a bear skin, hat,
Speaker 1: some hair, some grasses, and Sea fourteen analysis also later
Speaker 1: confirmed spindler suspicion that the mummy was at least four
Speaker 1: thousand years old. Turned out he was a lot older
Speaker 1: than that. As we've already mentioned, it had been about
Speaker 1: five thousand, three hundred years since this Copper age guy
Speaker 1: had died out there on the ice. That made him
Speaker 1: older than the Pharaoh's, older than most of the bog
Speaker 1: bodies in Europe, so truly a unique fine for archaeologists.
Speaker 1: The Iceman's Great Age made the media go crazy. I mean,
Speaker 1: you can probably remember Iceman specials on TV from years ago,
Speaker 1: plus all questions about him. Who was he, how did
Speaker 1: he die? Was he a shepherd, a shaman or an outlaw?
Speaker 1: Was he a vegetarian? Was he sacrificed? Some speculated that
Speaker 1: he was a hoax, maybe an Egyptian or Peruvian mummy
Speaker 1: stuck in the ice. Others realized he was more than
Speaker 1: just a passing news story, and that he needed a name.
Speaker 1: Viennese journalist Carl Wendel was the first to coin the
Speaker 1: name Utsie, from the valley where the body came from.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't just Utsie's great age and the mystery
Speaker 1: surrounding his life and death that made him such an
Speaker 1: impressive useful find. He was what the South Tyrol Museum
Speaker 1: of Archaeology calls a wet mummy, which means a mummy
Speaker 1: whose cells aren't desiccated. So normally you would think of
Speaker 1: Egyptian mummies they're kind of almost like dust, and um
Speaker 1: Utsi's non dust like makeup means that he could be
Speaker 1: subjected to scientific procedures without just crumbling away. So after
Speaker 1: all of these years, more than five thousand years, he's
Speaker 1: still a bit elastic. You can kind of perform living
Speaker 1: human or recently dead human type refutures on him. So
Speaker 1: over the next decade that's he had X rays, CT scans,
Speaker 1: studies of his mitochondrial DNA, bone and tooth analysis, and
Speaker 1: a thorough analysis of any pollen on in or near
Speaker 1: his body, and so bit by bit, this picture of
Speaker 1: the iceman started to emerge. They found out he was
Speaker 1: five ft two. He had been raised in the Azarco
Speaker 1: River Valley but lived in the Venosta Valley. He was
Speaker 1: old for a copper aged man, so he was about
Speaker 1: forty five years old, and he had the aches and
Speaker 1: pains to prove it. He had healed rib fractures, healed
Speaker 1: broken nose, worn down molars, but no tooth decay. I
Speaker 1: find that quite impressive. I think there's maybe a secret
Speaker 1: there to be learned or something. No Coca cola or
Speaker 1: something in his But he had hardened arteries also. So
Speaker 1: he also had bow real lines on his fingernails, and
Speaker 1: those meant that he had had some kind of major
Speaker 1: stress or illness eight weeks, thirteen weeks, in sixteen weeks
Speaker 1: before he died. Sometimes if you go through um some
Speaker 1: serious illness, your fingernails stopped growing and it leaves behind
Speaker 1: this little line. He also had tattoos covering his body,
Speaker 1: but not decorative tattoos. They were small charcoal crosses and lines,
Speaker 1: and they were located on the knees, ankles, wrists, in steps, calves,
Speaker 1: lower back, you know places where if you were a
Speaker 1: forty five year old, especially a forty five year old
Speaker 1: copper age man, he might have some chronic pain, and
Speaker 1: some of these spots even correspond to acupuncture points, so
Speaker 1: researchers really do believe that they were some kind of
Speaker 1: remedy for for pain he was experiencing. His copper acts
Speaker 1: probably meant that he was high status, but the high
Speaker 1: levels of arsenic in his body also suggest that he
Speaker 1: might have been directly involved in copper metalworking. He had
Speaker 1: a few genetic anomalies um including missing twelve ribs and
Speaker 1: no wisdom teeth, and a few ailments too. He had
Speaker 1: a whip worm infestation and possibly fleet I think a
Speaker 1: couple flea bodies were found on his person, no big
Speaker 1: surprise there. But he also might have been able or
Speaker 1: might have been equipped to handle at least the whipworm infestation.
Speaker 1: Among his gear where these hide strips with birch fungus attached,
Speaker 1: and birch fungus is uh. It has antibiotic properties that
Speaker 1: can help fight intestinal parasites and was used until pretty
Speaker 1: recently to to do so in some areas of the world,
Speaker 1: so he had his own medicine with them. He had
Speaker 1: a little medicine kit. He was also well dressed for
Speaker 1: the chili spring weather in which he died. He wore
Speaker 1: a loincloth, leggings, and a jacket, all made from hide.
Speaker 1: He sported a woven grass cape and the aforementioned bear
Speaker 1: skin hat. He also had some gear with him. He
Speaker 1: carried a dagger and a tender kit with a flint
Speaker 1: from about hundred and fifty kilometers away, which suggested some
Speaker 1: sophisticated copper age trade had gone on. Still, though, you know,
Speaker 1: we've figured out a lot, that's a lot of information
Speaker 1: about this guy who has been dead for so long,
Speaker 1: but fingernails don't really answer questions about who he was, like,
Speaker 1: what did he do, and maybe most intriguingly, why did
Speaker 1: he die alone in the mountains. So since the body
Speaker 1: was found on a traditional herding route, a lot of
Speaker 1: folks initially thought that he might have been a shepherd.
Speaker 1: He might have been out there tending his herds. But
Speaker 1: aside from the grass cloak, which is traditional shepherd's gear,
Speaker 1: he didn't have any other equipment. There was no wool,
Speaker 1: there was no crook, no dog here, no animals around
Speaker 1: him either. So a few other ideas have popped up
Speaker 1: over the years, including a shaman you mentioned that one earlier,
Speaker 1: although he had no rich objects on his person, a
Speaker 1: flint trader but no trade goods, an outlaw that's an
Speaker 1: exciting one. Prospector he didn't have any good tools for that,
Speaker 1: or a hunter. So a lot of these theories have
Speaker 1: sort of come in and out of fashion with no
Speaker 1: real definitive answers. But the question of how he died
Speaker 1: did get a big push in July two thousand one
Speaker 1: when researchers Paul Goffner and Eduard Garterer vehicle announced that
Speaker 1: new X rays showed an arrowhead buried in Let's shoulder,
Speaker 1: and they couldn't determine at the time how long it
Speaker 1: would have taken for that arrowhead to kill him, but
Speaker 1: they could say that he had been shot in the back,
Speaker 1: So then the plot thickened. In two thousand five went
Speaker 1: a garter vehicle and Andrea S. G near Lish of
Speaker 1: the Ludwig Maximilian University and Munich announced a sizeable defensive
Speaker 1: stab wound that had been found on Utzie's right palm.
Speaker 1: It was partly healed. He had received three to eight
Speaker 1: days before death. So this information, combined with a CT
Speaker 1: scan suggesting Utzy died on an empty stomach led to
Speaker 1: a new narrative of Utzy's last days. The iceman had
Speaker 1: had a fight, sustained a cut to his hand, and
Speaker 1: then fled through this Analis valley toward an alpine pass
Speaker 1: before his enemies caught up with him and polished him off.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that was the theory for a few years,
Speaker 1: and Gossner eventually retired, but he just kept on looking
Speaker 1: at old Iceman CT scans. So there's a that's an
Speaker 1: Iceman obsession for you, de Blina. But it it ended
Speaker 1: up paying off because in two thousand nine, according to
Speaker 1: a National and Geographic story by steven S Hall, Gossner
Speaker 1: decided that the iceman's empty stomach was really his empty colon,
Speaker 1: and his actual stomach looked like it may have been
Speaker 1: pushed up under his ribs. So the big question now,
Speaker 1: was there anything in it? Because if there was, that
Speaker 1: would dramatically change the working narrative. So planned were made
Speaker 1: to do a total investigation of the iceman, unlike any
Speaker 1: previous examination, really kind of an autopsy performed while the
Speaker 1: iceman was in a state of flight melt, and everything
Speaker 1: would take place through the Austrian windows you mentioned earlier
Speaker 1: made in nineteen so there would be no new incisions,
Speaker 1: no damage done to the body. In November two tho,
Speaker 1: after a marathon session, researchers came away with one hundred
Speaker 1: and forty nine new samples and promptly refroze et sea.
Speaker 1: It's likely to take years to analyze all the findings,
Speaker 1: but two thousand eleven already showed major work, so by
Speaker 1: June two thousand eleven, the iceman's genome had been sequenced,
Speaker 1: revealing that he was closely related to Southern Europeans of today,
Speaker 1: had lime disease, congenital risk factors for heart disease or stroke,
Speaker 1: was lactose intolerant, and had brown hair and brown eyes,
Speaker 1: not blue as earlier believed. And in August it came
Speaker 1: out in the Journal of Archaeological Science that Letsi had
Speaker 1: not in fact died hungry. Within just a few hours
Speaker 1: of his death, he had eaten a hearty meal of ibex,
Speaker 1: making the old on the run theory really pretty unlikely,
Speaker 1: and replacing it with one of a giant lunch, post
Speaker 1: lunch relaxation and then suddenly an arrow in the back
Speaker 1: and in a quote given to the Iceman Museum. Albert
Speaker 1: Zinc of the Institute for Mummies and the Iceman in Bolzano, Italy,
Speaker 1: explained that Utsi's stomach had shifted after his death under
Speaker 1: his ribs, and that concealed it, of course, during the
Speaker 1: earlier examinations. And he also said quote the Iceman wouldn't
Speaker 1: have been able to have a large meal under the
Speaker 1: heavy stress of a chase. It much more appears that
Speaker 1: he considered the situation safe enough to rest and eat
Speaker 1: a heavy meal after the strenuous ascent. Shortly afterward, he
Speaker 1: could have moved a short distance away from his place
Speaker 1: breast and was killed by a surprise ambush from behind.
Speaker 1: So there was another major discovery from that two thousand
Speaker 1: and ten examination. The body showed a pool of blood
Speaker 1: at the back of the brain. This could have been
Speaker 1: from a fall after the fatal arrow shot or a
Speaker 1: knock in the head. They're not sure. I think the
Speaker 1: National Geographic article called it a kudoo grass, perhaps from
Speaker 1: Utsi's killer, so who knows. But it's really fascinating to
Speaker 1: me that the narrative surrounding this five thousand, three year
Speaker 1: old man can change so much in two decades. I
Speaker 1: think that's the part of the story that that appeals
Speaker 1: to me. And it's just so interesting. It's really easy
Speaker 1: to find quotes that are retrospectively of Note two, and
Speaker 1: you have examination after examination with new finds, new findings
Speaker 1: turning up around every corner. In two thousand five, for instance,
Speaker 1: James H. Dixon, Claus Ogle, and Linda L. Hanley wrote
Speaker 1: for Scientific American, quote an autopsy would be too destructive
Speaker 1: that didn't turn out to be true. And then into
Speaker 1: a thousand two in an article titled time to leave
Speaker 1: uts the alone for The Lancet, David Sharp wrote, quote,
Speaker 1: I cannot help wondering if there will soon be a
Speaker 1: limit to what the tiralee and iceman can usefully tell us.
Speaker 1: I mean that was back in two thousand two, just
Speaker 1: a year after the arrowhead discovery came out, and it
Speaker 1: doesn't seem like there are any limits yet. No, not
Speaker 1: at all. And you really do find a record similar
Speaker 1: to that where big discoveries are made. People wonder if
Speaker 1: there's anything else that can possibly be revealed from this
Speaker 1: poor guy who's been poked and prodded and studied for
Speaker 1: sny years, and then another huge finding comes out, so
Speaker 1: We rarely cover pre history topics on this podcast, but
Speaker 1: we do often discuss speculative subjects Spring Heeled Jack, the
Speaker 1: Mad Trapper, the Sister's Fox, for example. This topic was
Speaker 1: so much more science centered than those, but almost just
Speaker 1: as speculative, because, for one thing, it's hard to get
Speaker 1: much out of and even miraculously preserved five thousand, three
Speaker 1: hundred year old body. Also, technology has advanced remarkably in
Speaker 1: the twenty years since us he was first found, So
Speaker 1: I mean, just imagine if he had been discovered in
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century or even the nineteen sixties or nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: it would have been a different story. But what makes
Speaker 1: us He's so important to researchers is not just the
Speaker 1: fact that his cells aren't all dried up or that
Speaker 1: he is more than five thousand years old. He's an
Speaker 1: accidental death, and he died unburied, so he kind of
Speaker 1: gives a day in the life of picture of the
Speaker 1: copper age instead of another study of copper age burials.
Speaker 1: He died wearing presumably everyday clothes, carrying everyday objects, having
Speaker 1: just eaten his Big I Beck lunch presumably everyday fair.
Speaker 1: So even if researchers don't figure out what exactly he
Speaker 1: did for a living or the exact rundown of how
Speaker 1: he died. He does offer a peek at copper Age
Speaker 1: life that we really wouldn't have had otherwise. But this
Speaker 1: whole thing started because of news of zs girlfriend. So
Speaker 1: what was her deal? Well, according to Discovery News, a
Speaker 1: female skeleton was found during the construction of a kindergarten
Speaker 1: in Italy. It was a near a favorite vacation spot
Speaker 1: of the late Pope John Paul the Second and current
Speaker 1: Pope Benedict the sixteenth. So the site is near South Tyrol,
Speaker 1: just a few hundred miles away from where Letsi was found,
Speaker 1: and the skeleton is approximately the same age as Letsy.
Speaker 1: Thus why she has a couple of nicknames, and one
Speaker 1: of the main ones is A's girlfriend. So, now that
Speaker 1: we've talked about both the iceman and the Iceman's girlfriend,
Speaker 1: I think that's a good point to transition to listener mail.
Speaker 1: So we got a letter from Adam, and we should
Speaker 1: just note first of all that it is a letter
Speaker 1: written on the back of a um like a little
Speaker 1: coloring chart for St. Nicholas Day. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: a little devil with a a poker and everything. Adam
Speaker 1: wrote first a note about the stationary I live in
Speaker 1: the Czech Republic, which is an hour's drive north of Prague,
Speaker 1: that the town he lives in. I'm from Oregon, but
Speaker 1: I've been teaching English to little children here for several years.
Speaker 1: This paper I use as an example in a lesson
Speaker 1: about colors because it is pretty colorful red, orange, yellow, black. Um.
Speaker 1: But he also mentioned that St. Nicholas Day is a
Speaker 1: big holiday in the Czech Republic. Um it's on December six,
Speaker 1: and we just missed it not too long ago. I
Speaker 1: consider doing an episode on St. Nicholas for this year's
Speaker 1: UM Christmas themed podcast. Much requested. It is much requested.
Speaker 1: Maybe some other time, but anyway. Adam also sent us
Speaker 1: a pack of Empress CC playing cards, and that's why
Speaker 1: I decided to read this listener meal since another Austrian
Speaker 1: story or Austro Hungarian Empire story. So um, thank you.
Speaker 1: Maybe at Deplina and I will have a round of
Speaker 1: Crazy Eights or something after we finished recording, but we
Speaker 1: have one more little bit of information on at Sea
Speaker 1: before we leave. You guys, and you won't want to
Speaker 1: miss this it's a curse, because of what kind of
Speaker 1: mummy story would be complete without a curse? Is so true?
Speaker 1: So according to a two thousand five BBC articles, seven
Speaker 1: people connected to the mummy have died, some not far
Speaker 1: from where UTSI was found, including Helmett Simon who died
Speaker 1: in a winter storm. And of course many many people
Speaker 1: have worked with LETSI over the years, and no study
Speaker 1: has been done on their rate of survival as it
Speaker 1: was done for the King tut curse. But maybe that's next. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe we'll We'll stay tuned on this one. And as
Speaker 1: I think we've mentioned on maybe the McBeth curse episode,
Speaker 1: I hope that curses like this don't extend to podcasters.
Speaker 1: Knock on wood, uh to Blina is like I didn't
Speaker 1: know what I was getting into. Um. Anyway, we'll leave
Speaker 1: on that note, vicious luck, And if you have anything
Speaker 1: else you want to share about the Iceman, you can
Speaker 1: email us that history podcast at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: We're also on Twitter at Myston History, and we are
Speaker 1: on Facebook. And if you want to learn a little
Speaker 1: more about another famous curse, I wrote an article several
Speaker 1: years ago called is there really a curse on King
Speaker 1: Tut's tomb and as I mentioned, that's a curse that
Speaker 1: has been studied. There's statistical analysis relating to it, so
Speaker 1: you can look that one up by searching for King
Speaker 1: Tut on our homepage at www dot how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast,
Speaker 1: Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as
Speaker 1: we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.
Speaker 1: The house Stuff Works iPhone app has a ride downloaded
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