What was otzi doing before he died

Since food remains fresher in the stomach where it only stays two to four hours, the discovery of pollen in this part of the body gives further weight to this theory. This alone would have been sufficient to cause death, but was no doubt at least a contributory factor along with his arrow wound. What is still unclear is whether he incurred the trauma through a fall or a blow to the head.

The majority of the findings are based on the examination of tissue samples from the stomach and the brain taken endoscopically by a team of scientists from Magdeburg, Bolzano and Munich in November Since then, scientists from almost all disciplines have been investigating these samples from their own specific scientific angles using subject-specific methods: medics, nanotechnologists, anthropologists, biochemists, archaeologists and physicists.

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He was found clutching his dagger in the same hand that had been badly wounded. It looks as if the Iceman was planning to flee and that his trip was brought to an end by his opponents. Some scholars had suggested before that Otzi may have been ritually killed as part of human sacrifice or religious ritual.

But the discovery of blood of others on his clothes and arrowif that evidence holds uppretty much refutes arguments of that theory. There are still a lot of unknowns. For example it is still not clear if the arrow wound is what killed him. If arteries had been severed he may have bled to death. If not he could have survived a length of time after he was shot. In , after ten years of meticulously examining him, scientists finally came up with a likely scenario of how Otzi died.

That year doctors in Italy found a flint arrowhead in his left shoulder and a wound that had not healed and deduced that an arrow entered his back, passed near his lung and severed an artery, causing him to die from loss of blood. Further examination revealed that Otzi had deep wounds on his hands that could have been caused in a knife fight. The entry point of the arrow is below the arrow head which suggests he shot from below. A CAT scan performed at a hospital in Bolzano revealed that flint-head arrow most likely pierced a bone before making made a centimeter-wide gash in his subclavian artery, which delivers blood from the heart the left arm.

It has been determined that Otzi died in late spring or early summer based in the presence of pollen from the hop hornbeam, an Alpine tree with yellow flowers that blooms that time of year. Initially it was thought that he was trapped in a freak storm or blizzard that blew through the pass where he was found, and he died of exposure.

His stomach was empty but there was a lot of material in his large intestine, which means he had probably eaten eight hour before he died. Some speculated he died of malnutrition or possibly fell in crevasse, or maybe was even offered as a human sacrifice. Some scientists think Otzi was being pursued by people that attacked him and say he escaped his attackers and died alone. Otherwise they argue he would have been robbed of his possessions.

Using ballistics evidence and reasoning like that used by CSI investigators, other scientists believe that Otzi was shot with an arrow and his attackers pulled the arrow shaft from his body and left him to bleed.

The location behind the shoulder blade is the same place where prehistoric hunters aimed to bring down game in a single shot. Findings announced in by Dr. Tom Loy of Queensland University in Australia indicated that Otzi may have stood his ground and fought off several foes after being shot and was then helped by a friend. The year-old mummified body was first found by mountaineers in the Alps on the border of Italy and Austria in His demise was a gruesome one: it is thought he bled to death after being shot in the left shoulder with an arrow.

The iceman was so well-preserved that scientists have not only been able to study his clothes and gear , but also the contents of his stomach and intestines. The plants were from at least 75 different species, only 23 of which live in that precise area today.

The mummy Home The mummy. The mummy. Due to the length of time it lay in the snow and ice, the body dehydrated, i.

Most mummies were treated with substances to preserve them as part of ritual burial after their organs had been removed. Following reports of the find by the international media, various names were coined for the mummy.

Over nicknames were mooted in the first few weeks. The mummy in the Museum Since , the mummy has been housed in a specially devised cold cell in the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano.

The cold cell simulates glacier conditions. The mummy weighs approximately 13 kg and is 1. The mummy is regularly sprayed with sterile water to prevent loss of its natural moisture. State of health. This was a good age considering the short life expectancy years ago. Height: The mummy is 1. Weight: The mummy weighs approx.

In life, he would have weighed about 50 kg.