Stuff You Should Know - Selects: The Murder Mystery of Ötzi the Iceman

Episode Date: June 15, 2024

About 5,300 years ago a Copper Age shepherd was murdered. He just happened to die in a place where his body was so well preserved that gave researchers an actual shot at determining the course of his final day on Earth. Josh and Chuck take you through their reconstruction in this classic episode.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For so many people living with an autoimmune condition like myasthenia gravis or chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy, the emotional toll can be as real as the physical symptoms. That's why in an all new season of Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition from Ruby Studio and Argenics, host Martine Hackett gets to the heart of the emotional journey for individuals living with these conditions. To find community and inspiration on your journey, listen now on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

You may know Jackson Pollock, the painter famous for his iconic drip paintings. But what do you know about his wife, artist Lee Krasner? On Death of an Artist, Krasner and Pollock, the story of the artist who reset the market for American abstract painting, just maybe not the one you're thinking of. Listen to Death of an Artist, Krasner and Pollock on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey everyone, it's Josh, your old pal, and for this week's Select I've chosen our episode on Utsi the Iceman from November of 2019.

Utsi was discovered high in the Alps by hikers in 1991, and since then he has become perhaps the world's most closely studied corpse. He's not only fascinating because of the information he's brought us about everyday life in the Copper Age, where he hails from, he's also fascinating because of what he demonstrates researchers are able to do in the present, today. They've gone so far as to recreate his last couple days on Earth. That's how Mac researchers are today. Hope you enjoy this episode, because it's a great one. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. Hey, there's guest producer Josh over there, which makes this Stuff You Should Know all inclusive. And guest, ghost host, Chuck. Are you a ghost now? Did you die?

No, I just thought if there was two Josh's in here, I'd feel a little left out. Oh, I see. Ganged up on? Yeah, I just, I had no clever way to say it. Ghost host, you're right about that. My mouth isn't working today, my brain. That's all right.

It's not connecting. It's been a long week already, and it's only Tuesday. Really, right? Yeah. Is it just me all right. It's been a long week already, it's only Tuesday. Really, right? Yeah. Is it just me? No, it's been a long week. Today's like, I don't know, I don't want to complain, nevermind.

Everything's great. Hey, let me ask you something. Does Oatsey have an umlaut or not? Yes, it's Oatsey. Okay. It rhymes with Tootsie, I saw someone put it. I think our good friends at Smithsonian Magazine. Yeah, Oatsey, there's a bit of an R in there.

Yeah, I like itsy. All right. Like tootsy, roll. Tootsy. The dead mummy. Itsy. This is a good one. This is exciting. I've been wanting to do one on this one too.

I had two, but in what, spurned, spurned or spurred? Spurn is where you say get away. Spurred. Spurred is like go ahead. Get up. Okay, nice. Yeah, that makes sense because you're using your spurs. Spurred.

Sure, I'm sure that's where that comes from. Surely. Okay, wow, Chuck, you just blew my mind. What spurred this was, let's see, you made some news recently because they managed to trace his last like day and a half. Yeah, really like in the past few days even. Yeah, and about 5300 years ago, he had the same thoughts that we had when we started this podcast.

He's like, it's only Tuesday and this has been a long week already. A long, deadly, bloody week. Yeah, I've been interested in this since I saw the facial reconstruction photos. I was like, it's it was Jack Palance. Chris Christopherson. Is that, oh, okay. Dude, spinning. A little bit of both. No, it's like they said,

Mr. Christopherson, please come in so we can. Well, now that I think about it, Christopherson and Jack Palance have some similarities. If you put a beard on Jack Palance. Really? Yeah, sure, squinty eyes. Yeah, I guess so. Roundish eyes. Yeah, I guess so. Roundish face.

Yeah, I guess you're right. I can see both. Christofferson, man, what a legend. Remember, yeah, look, there's Chris Christofferson. Kidding, that's Itsy. Yeah, I mean, it's me and Bobby McGee right there. Exactly. Did you see the Ken Burns documentary?

No, I didn't. Not yet. You haven't yet still? No, I went to buy it the other day and I just have not yet. So good. You gotta buy that stuff, right? Yeah. All right, I just didn't know if there was a workaround and you're like, oh no, dude, here's what you do.

I mean, I'll buy it. It's like 60 bucks. Oh, wow. PBS gives it away for free. What, do you got some PBS connection? No, it was on PBS for a while. Oh, do you got some PBS connection? No, it was on PBS for a while. Oh, do you have cable or something? See, I don't have cable. I don't even think you have to have cable. Oh, you mean like, you just stream?

Yes. You're up the creek. Yeah, I thought you meant, no, you don't have to have cable to get PBS. You just like, think positive thoughts and help people in the world. And it just beams into your eyelids. Well, no, what I was thinking, you have to stand there and hold like a coat hanger a certain way,

and your TV in the other hand. Oh, sure. You can get PBS. I'm going to buy it though. It looks great. Why not? It is good. And I would say, I would say it's worth roughly $60. It's pretty good. But anyway, Chris Christopherson figures big into one of the episodes. You're like, it's not worth more than 45. But go ahead and pay the extra 15.

Right, because it goes to Ken Burns' hairdresser. That's right. And that's quite a collection of brushes that that person has to maintain. But Chris Christopherson is interviewed, like, today. Oh, interesting. He looks exactly like, let's see now. Well, I tried to get him on Movie Crush, because he played the city winery, which is like attached to our building, basically. Exactly like, let's see now. Well, I tried to get him on Movie Crush, because he played the city winery,

which is like attached to our building basically. So I will try and get people from over there on the basis of like, all you got to do is walk over across the parking lot. Right. His manager emailed me back and said, and this should hearten you as well, said I'm actually a Stuff You Should Know fan,

the manager, and said, but you know what? He doesn't really do interviews anymore. So maybe I just got the easy pass. Right. But man, I really wanted that one to come through. Yeah, that would have been cool. To have that dude in this office, it would have been pretty special. Yeah.

But I'm no Ken Burns. No. Who is? Ken Burns. Yeah, that's true. All right, let's talk, should we take a break? Let's go back, Yeah, that's true. All right, let's talk, should we take a break? Let's go back, Chuck, a little bit.

Let's get in the way back machine. It's been a little while. Okay. We're going to go back, and we even know exactly when we're going back to. 1.30 p.m. on September 19th, 1991. Whoa! Ninety-one. I'm in college.

It's a salad day. I'm wearing a flavor-flav clock around my neck. Nice. I was a sophomore in high school. Yeah. That's all I have to say about that. I never wore the flavor-flav clock, but anytime that... Oh, you should have let that be.

Well, I should have. I was not cool enough. But I was listening to Apocalypse 91. You know what I'm saying? You shouldn't have admitted that you didn't wear it. No, I know. But no one believed that. They know I'm not that cool. You know, Aaron Cooper made a pretty awesome... One of my favorite ones of all time was us as public enemy. And I think I'm Flavor Flaving it, but you look like Chuck D.

And it's just a cool, it's a cool Photoshop of us. I tried to get Chuck D. on Movie Crush, too. Did he play the city whiner? No, but he lives in Atlanta. Oh, I didn't know that. And at least part-time. What did he say? He didn't say anything, because the management company I emailed said we don't manage him anymore.

So it was just a dead end. I gotcha. But Chuck D, if you're listening, Pond City Market, let's talk about your favorite movie. Right. And also shout out to Chris Christopherson's manager. That's right, of course. All right. Boy, we're going to have to go back and edit all this out. No, it's 1.30 p.m. It's September 19th, 1991, and we are hiking with Erika and Helmut Simon. They're German, but

we are hiking in the Otsal Alps in Italy. Yes, between Italy and Austria, like right on the border. Yeah, very close to the border. And on this peak, the Simons decided that as they were descending, that they would take a shortcut. And the shortcut took them through this pass, Pastor Cravas. And in this little shallow Cravas, they said, oh, there's a dead body. There's a corpse.

And you were like, what? I was. Because we were there too. Right, yeah. And I said, it's right on time, boy. Right, exactly. Yeah, that's great. So the thing is, is they could see it was a cadaver,

like they could see the corpse's back, back of the head, arm hanging out. And they just thought, well, we heard that there was a hiker that was recently killed, and that's probably who that is. We'll take a couple of pictures and go down and tell somebody who owns like the nearest lodge. Right, and on the way down, you and I are going like, that was not a hiker that was recently killed.

No. Even I knew that. Like, did you see that guy? He was super old. He was a mummy. The Simons are crazy. And the Simons were not crazy, but I'm sure they were saying the same thing. They decided to be your shot. Right. So, some people went up and I think within a day or two, they went up to try to get this dead hiker, who they thought was a dead hiker out, and they did a terrible job with it.

They used ski poles to chip away at the ice. They used an ice hammer to chip away at the ice. Damaged the body. But they think, oh, it's just like some hiker, whatever, it'll be fine. Put him in a wooden casket. And this article makes it sound like he, like the whole world or everybody who knew about this body

just thought it was a modern hiker for, you know, a while until the body came down the mountains. That's not the case. One of the things that when they were getting this body out, they accidentally excavated was a copper headed ax. And word got out that there was an ax with this body and that is really weird. And it was copper.

Copper with like a wooden shaft and everything. It was clearly a very, very, very old ax. And so pretty quickly they realized that they were onto something here. For sure. And what they found out was this body. Hi, frozen body. One of my favorite Simpsons lines ever. That's a good one. Five thousand years old.

That's the same like same little bit as when he goes, moon pie. What a time to be alive. Abe. Oh, the best. Oh, not Abe. No, that was... Oh, not Abe. Abe's buddy. What's his name? Oh, man. It'll come to me later.

I'll say it. People are screaming at their... I know. I can picture him, the long beard. ...at their old Philcos right now. Oh, what is it? I want to say, Chauncey or Chalmers is not that. It's something very similar to that.

I'm just going to look it up. I'm kidding. All right. I'm going to keep going. So they get this body out and removed it on September 23rd, 1991, sealed it up, like you said, flew it out of town in a wooden coffin to Innsbruck, the Institute of Forensic Medicine. And there was an archaeologist named Konrad Spindler there who said, this body's at least 4,000 years old. At the very least. What's Abe's friend's name?

Jasper Beardley. Jasper. Jasper, yeah. Of course. So they nicknamed them Ötzi because of the region of the Oatsall Alps. Very cute little name. It is. Other people call them Frozen Fritz. Oh, really?

Yeah, I like Ötzi way more. Yeah people call him Frozen Fritz. Oh, really? Yeah. I like Otzi way more. Yeah. Otzi's nice. Yeah. So, in pretty short order, they realized that what they had just excavated in the roughest possible manner and accidentally come upon was the corpse of a 5,300-year-old body. Yeah.

So, when I said, the guy said it was 4,000 years old, he said that was the initial like, he's at least this old. Right. Yeah. But it turns out that after further study, they figured out he was actually 5300 years old. Right. And that he lived in the Copper Age,

which was a relatively brief period in human history, but a really important one between the Neolithic age, at the end of the Neolithic age, when the first farmers started to appear, and the Bronze Age, when the first, what we consider society and civilization and history began. Right. And we know very little about this.

And what these hikers had discovered was a snapshot of life during that time, because, let's see, appeared to have just died where he, or fell where he died. Or died where he fell, yeah. That was almost there. And leaving his belongings with him, and he wasn't like a great revered figure.

He wasn't buried, he wasn't prepared. He was kept intact for 5 5300 years on this glacier. Yeah, that was the biggest deal because they have mummies and they have older mummies. But like you said, their organs are removed. They're filled with embalming chemicals and things they used at the time for preservation for the afterlife and all this. So this was a really big deal to find this body just really, really scarily well preserved. And when we say well preserved, it doesn't look like Chris Christofferson. But the organs were there.

And like didn't the red blood cells have stuff inside? Still intact, yeah. It's the oldest intact blood sample ever taken. Utsis was. So, and the fact that he wasn't buried provides a snapshot. It wasn't ritualized. It was this guy was just living his life and he died and happened to be preserved perfectly. So his belongings were preserved along with them and things that are organic and typically decay long before 5300 years comes and goes. So his clothing made of like different types of leather was preserved. His coat or cape made of woven grasses was preserved. It was all really cool when you look at the shoes and the bearskin hat and it was very cool. Bearskin hat was another one. His tool kit was preserved.

All of the stuff that we had like just kind of little hints and traces and glimpses of from different like burial caches or just happened to find some artifact or whatever. This was like a straight up Polaroid picture of life and the copper. Yeah, it was almost like someone stumbled upon a Museum of Natural History display, but it was real. Right.

Well put, Chuck. You know who would have loved that analogy? Chris Christopherson. I was about to say either Jasper or Ertzi. And I don't mean would have in the fact that he's dead. I mean would have had he heard it. I agree. He's never going to hear this.

You never know. I'm like using reverse psychology as manager right now. Well you might as well, Willie Nelson will never listen to these either. Neither will Dolly Parton. Yeah. We want all the country legends listening. Ronnie Millsap will never hear this. Is he still with us?

Sure. Okay. Not with us though because he doesn't listen to stuff you should know. Never will. So apparently where Ertzi actually fell was pretty lucky because it was in a very shallow crevasse and the fact that it was kind of walled up on both sides of him kept him, if he was just out in the open, the freeze-thaw cycle over the years would have washed everything away and ripped him apart and it didn't happen because he kind of fell in this crevasse. All 5'2", 134 pounds of him.

Yeah, which is 158 centimeters and 61 kilograms. That's right. He had brown eyes. Apparently at 5'2", was even a little short for the time. But he was ripped. Yeah, he was pretty sturdy. You know, in his mid-40s, like we said, and really strong legs and, you know, kind of the fun thing about this is the archeological forensics of trying to piece together, like, what was he doing? How did he die? What, we'll get to all of that, but just the fact that, like like he had big legs, they were like, this guy, he's probably a

goat herder. He's walking up and down these mountains all the time. Look at those calves. Yeah. He looked like the guy from that One Liberty Mutual commercial. I don't know what you mean. It doesn't matter. Okay.

Like 10 people just laughed. What else did he have? He had a dagger. He had that axe you were talking about. The dagger had a dagger, he had that axe you were talking about, the dagger, had a wicker sheath, he had a backpack, he had a leather pouch. Yeah, the backpack, by the way, we'll never know how it worked because it got destroyed by the people who went and dug him out of the ice. He had some rudimentary snowshoes, he had a belt that matched his cape, right?

Yeah. Oh man And we'll talk about that but apparently they think that was on purpose. Yes that he was a bit of a fashionista Yeah, he had a couple of like vessels that were lined with Maple leaves that he used to carry embers from place to place So we wouldn't have to start a fire again and all the stuff you're like, I'm cool a flint dagger cool copper X Oh some embers. I think it's, you're like, I'm cool, a Flint Dagger, cool, Copper X, oh, some embers. I think it's all cool. Yeah, I do too, but I can see people out there

being like, talk about math or something, right? The thing is, is like all this stuff that seems kind of boring and superficial has been so thoroughly studied that it's actually been used to paint a larger picture. Like we understand the Copper Age in Europe way better than we did before Utsi was discovered, just from finding the few things that he died with

and him himself. He also interestingly had 61 tattoos all over his body. Chuck, I've been waiting for this day. You said tattoos correctly. Oh, you mean the tattoos? Oh man, I've been waiting for this day. What? You said tattoos correctly. Oh, you mean the tattoos? Oh, man. I shouldn't have said anything. So, yeah, and they were, they covered them from head to toe in different parts and they

didn't use needles back then, obviously, but they would rub or cut the skin open and then rub charcoal inside. And they're all, they mapped them out in 2015 and organized them into 19 groups. And they are basically, you know, like maybe three identical lines, short lines, like an inch long or like a cross, not a spiritual religious cross, but you know. Like a plus sign? Yeah. Or like a Chinese character that has some inspirational association.

Right. Perseverance or something. He had a lower back tattoo of a thorny branch. Yeah. But yeah, they mapped these all out and for a while they thought, and some people still think, because they were largely found around the joints and along his back and he had back problems and he basically was marked up where he hurt, it looks like. And they thought it might have been either acupuncture points to mark or it might have been the acupuncture treatment itself.

Right, but they do think that it had something to do with acupuncture, which in and of itself was a big revelation because they thought up to that point that acupuncture had been invented 2,000 years after otsi and way further east in Asia. Right. But now they think that may not have been the case. No. Because they found a new cluster of tattoos on his chest that they didn't formally recognize. And they were like, there are no acupuncture points there and he didn't have any injuries there. So now they're, they didn't throw it out with the bath water, but there are people now that are saying like, we don't know if that's true or not.

No, okay, so I'm really glad you said that. Everything that we know about Utzi, aside from the fact that he is dead, that we have a pretty good idea of when he lived, probably was, height, weight was, stuff like that. Everything else is interpretation. So you have to remember that. Interpretation. Super educated and usually displaying the current understanding of history

or interpretation of history or events. But it is still interpretation. That's part of archeology, anthropology and history, especially when you're talking about prehistory. He lived during a time before anybody wrote anything down or recorded anything, which makes it prehistoric. But you just bear that in mind, that everything we're talking about

and everything you go read about, Otzi, is very much described in absolute terms. But it is our picture and image of him, how he lived, how he died, has really shaped and shifted over the years since he was discovered. And it still is. It's still malleable. Nothing is definitive. Nothing said in ice. Nice. All right. Let's take a break. It was a bad joke.

We'll talk about Oertze's health. Right for this. the list of fears is endless. But while you're clutching your blanket in the dark, wondering if that sound in the hall was actually a footstep, the real danger is in your hand, when you're behind the wheel. And while you might think a great white shark is scary, what's really terrifying and even deadly is distracted driving. Eyes Forward, Don't Drive Distracted. Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council. Hey, fam, I'm Simone Boyce.

I'm Danielle Robay. And we're the hosts of The Bright Side, the daily podcast from Hello Sunshine that is guaranteed to light up your day. Every weekday, we bring you conversations with the culture makers who inspire us. Like our recent episode with legendary singer-songwriter and mental health advocate, Jewel. All of our hearts are destined to be broken at some point.

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love all over again by listening to Bridgerton the Official Podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe to catch a new episode every Thursday. Was he healthy? I mean he was, no. He was a person of age in his mid-forties of a time where at that age he's going to be pretty beat up. Yeah. He wasn't unhealthy in like the modern sense where he's like deliberately wrecking his health because he's eating too much junk food or something like, you know, me.

But he was unhealthy in the way that a person would be unhealthy from living close to the land at a time before medicine had really developed. Yeah, exactly. No doctors, no dentists. So as you would imagine, he had gum disease, heart disease, Lyme disease, gallbladder stones, hardened arteries, gallstones. Yeah. The disorder's so nice, we named it twice. That's right. He had a whipworm parasite in his gut. He had H. pylori in his gut.

And all of this is to say, like you said, he was probably a pretty normal dude of mid-40s of the time. Right. He was, they couldn't find his stomach for a long time. It's amazing how much of the stuff, like, it was found over the years. Like this tattoo, this new tattoo was just found a few years ago. Yeah. After like many, many years of study. His birthmark that looks like Abraham Lincoln eluded people for decades.

But they couldn't even find his stomach and they found it like, oh, here it is. Twenty years later, they found it wedged up between his ribs and his lungs. Yeah, and they found it because they noticed he had gallstones. So they basically traced a path from the gallbladder to the stomach and said, there it is, we found it. And they were really happy they found it because when they started to dissect it or take samples from it, they found that it was full. Yeah.

He died like within an hour or so of eating his last meal and hadn't digested it. He had food in his, in his colon. He had food in his intestines. He had a turtle head peeking out. Right. That's awesome. What, his last meal was dried ibex and deer meat with einkhorn wheat. Yes, and slow plums.

I don't know why that wasn't mentioned in there. You can get that same meal in Brooklyn. Yep. Served to you by a guy with a waxed mustache and like some sort of arm band. An arm garter. Yeah, an arm garter. That's it, isn't it? Yeah, that's it. So, they think some sort of like fatty cured meat, kind of like a bacon, a cured bacon today, and the eighorn wheat was from bread, and he also ate slow plums.

Gotcha. Okay? Slow plums. Yeah, that they make slow gin from. Oh, really? Which I've never had. Have you? That's S-L-O-E plums. Yeah. That they make slow gin from. Oh, really? Which I've never had. Have you?

That's S-L-O-E, right? Yeah. Right. It's like supposedly a very tart kind of bitterish plum, but it's like loaded with vitamins. I've never had it. I remember it seemed like an old person drink was a slow gin fizz. Like an old person who's like 150 years old. Yeah. When I lived in Arizona, there were all those snowbirds were down there. They drink like slow gin fizz. Like an old person who's like 150 years old. Yeah, so when I lived in Arizona,

there were all the snowbirds were down there. They drink like slow gin fizz. Really? I've never been present when somebody ordered a slow gin fizz. Yeah. I would like to try one sometime. Sure, I'd try one.

Okay. Josh, go get us a couple of slow gin fizzes. Stat. Make it a double. I guarantee you there's a bar in this dumb building that has slow gin fizzes on the menu. Sure, sure. with arm garters Can I keep the arm garter comes with the drink?

So Let's talk a little bit more about the copper age I guess He had well we'll save his injuries for a minute here, okay We'll talk a bit a little about his lifestyle in the copper age. Like you said, he was, as demonstrated by his meals, he lived a pretty like, farming, pleasant life down there it seems like, but not one without conflict. You know? Sure. Based on his meals? Well, based on his meals, he lived a farming type lifestyle, but based on injuries we're going to talk about,

it seems like that, you know, he had some enemies. So, from what I saw, and I mean, we used a lot of different articles, but National Geographic is very well represented in here, Live Science, History.com, the BBC. I came across something from the pen Pennsylvania the pen museum or you pen museum. I think they have a magazine called expedition That was pretty awesome. I had a pretty great thing and I saw a couple of things from Historians that wrote up basically descriptions of a Tse and thought co which is just a surprising great resource Yeah. Yeah, have you ever noticed?

Yes. Yep. So in one of these, I saw that it was kind of put like he lived as a farmer and enjoyed like the fruits of village life too. So things like cheese and processed grains and cereals. So bread and stuff like that. Right. And the idea is that he didn't know how to bake bread or make cheese.

He was part of a village or a society where somebody knew how to bake bread and somebody knew how to make cheese. So the professions were starting to emerge. But that he also was pastoral and that like he herded sheep and that's he herded sheep and that's probably what he did most of the time. And then he also lived very close to the earth,

the land as well. Like his last meal was wild game, ibex and deer and slow plums that he probably plucked himself. So he was kind of like this transitional human plucked himself. So he was kind of like this transitional human from the hunter-gatherer past into the agrarian agriculture-based future that spread out just ahead of him. Yeah, like just ahead of him were like real deal Italians out there baking baguettes. Yeah. Well, that's French. Yeah. What do I mean? Italian bread.

Yeah. In Italy, they just call it bread. That's right. I mentioned earlier that it's clothes matched, and they do think, and of course, again, this is all speculation, but these garments were pretty refined, even when you look at them now. Like, he had these fur skin leggings that were held up by suspenders. By Alexander McQueen. Oh man, I went and saw that. I know, that was amazing.

So good. And a great documentary on him too. You should check out. I didn't see it. It's good. And sad. They talk about the color of the animal skin, so in the contrasting colors, they think were actually matched like elaborately.

And he had like, like he he said a sense of style. Like you know is that possible? But I mean it seems like a lot to extrapolate that his coat and his belt matched. And so they were like hey he had a real personal identity. Whereas it could have been just like that's the materials that he had on hand that fit. That's possible, but I think what they would assert is that it has enough panache that the chances of it just being random are very unlikely or less likely than it being, you know, asserting his sense of fashion. And well, and he was Italian.

That's right. So, you know, Italians in their fashion go hand in hand. They love it. Everyone who's been to Milano knows that. They're Firenze. I remember when I was touring Europe as a youth, my friend and I laughing at the Italian guys in the hostels were like, these 19-year-old dudes were so put together and like would spend so much time in the mirror wearing the cologne and getting their hair just perfect. And we were just disgusting humans. And they

got the girls. So turns out that they were on to something. A little bit of extra effort really does it. And the big hair. Yeah, they were great guys. So we met some cool Italian dudes. One of the other things too, though, that the fact that he clearly was involved in a village, they think that he was associated with a particular village to the south, in a valley near the mountains. It was things like bread and cheese that they think they found in his body. But also the fact that he obviously didn't know how to make his own tools.

Somebody else had. He probably did not know how to weave the cape he was wearing. Somebody else had done that. Yeah, they all had their specialties. Yeah, the tattoos, he couldn't have put some of them on his own body. He probably went to see a medical practitioner to do that. So yeah, this is at a point when specialists and specialized professions are starting to emerge.

Yeah, it's a really cool time. Yeah, and these are the things that we've learned from, you know, that we've gleaned from the stuff that we've found with him. I think it's just astoundingly fascinating. Yeah, it's really cool. This is a really interesting period, I think, of human development.

It's also called, by the way, the Copper Age or the Chalcolithic. I like Copper Age. I do too. Chalcolithic. It just kind of coughs out of the mouth, doesn't it? Yeah. So, let's talk a little bit about what might have happened to Ötzi and how he found himself dead on that mountain.

Okay. Because there are quite a few theories over the years. And like you said, even this week, they have some more leads. But he was wounded. He had a really bad wound on his right hand. They found out he was right handed too, so this is a big deal.

Between his thumb and his forefinger there, that area went all the way down to the bone. But it looked like it had healed up a little bit. So it probably happened, they said, within a few days of when he died. But it was healing. But it was a big injury, like we said, because he was right-handed. But it's not the kind of thing that killed him. He didn't bleed out from that or anything like that.

No. So it makes you think, well, what did kill him then? Right. Well, they think that might have been from a fight perhaps, that wound. That has been almost universally agreed upon from the outset. Right. That he probably didn't inflict that wound himself. That it seems to have been a defensive wound. Right.

There was a guy named Alexander Horn who was an inspector with the Munich police. And so we should give just a little background for a second. When Utsi was found, he was taken into Germany, down the mountain into, or Austria, Innsbruck, Austria. And the Germans were heavily involved as well as the Austrians. And the Italians were less involved.

And that's where he kind of stayed for the first few years, I think about a decade or less after he was discovered. And then eventually he was transferred to Italy, the Italian side. Yeah, because they were like, he's the founder on our side. Yeah. Like just barely.

I think also, I don't know if this contributed to or if it came later, but he does seem to have been linked to the Italian side where like you said, he was an Italian. Right. So he was transferred to Italy. And when they took custody of him, man, they pulled out all the stops.

They put him up in Balzano, Italy, near about, I think like 30 miles or something from where he was found. They built a museum specifically for him, an institute built around studying him. And they proceeded to study him more than any other mummy has ever been studied, probably any other body then has ever been studied

in the history of the world. Yeah, for sure. And have just churned out paper after paper after paper based on their findings from him. So, but at first, some of the ideas that we have about Ötzi and what happened to him come from the earliest interpretations posed by the Germans and the Austrians when they had custody of Ötzi and what happened to him come from the earliest interpretations posed by the Germans and the Austrians

when they had custody of Ötzi. Right, which weren't necessarily right as it turns out. No, but some may have been. But my ultimate point was everybody says from the outset that the wound in his hand was a defensive wound that came from close combat with somebody else. That's right. For a while they thought there was an Austrian archaeologist named Konrad Spindler that I mentioned earlier, that they sort of recreated the scene.

And their contention early on was like, man, that axe is leaning up against the rock. It's propped up there. Like, we think everything is literally frozen in time from how it was. And I think that's one of the things that they've later refuted, right? And they said that it looks like things might have moved around some. Yeah, they think that the, what would you call it, the site, I guess, from the freeze-thaw cycle just kind of redistributed the stuff. Yeah, which, you know, it's still all valid, but it was not necessarily exactly as it was at his moment of death. Indeed.

They did find his hat, though, off of his head, as if it just kind of fell off of his head, which might have been true. Right. So, some of those early stuff, they also found what they thought were fractured ribs that had not healed. Right. So, the earliest picture was this. Like they treated it like this is a dead body mystery. Where did this dead body come from? How did he die? Yeah, well quickly though, they also found pollen in his gut

that they thought came from an autumn plant, so they were like he died in the fall. Right, okay. So that's the full set up of the bad information. So the first idea, and I think it was Spindler who came up with the disaster theory, wasn't it? I think so. Conrad Spindler said, okay, here's what happened to Ötzi.

He came down from the mountain, probably herding some sheep or goats. In the fall. Went down to his village, and got in an altercation with somebody, cut his hand. You're looking at my wife? Right. That kind of thing.

That's nice. And he fled, oh, and part of the altercation also resulted in some cracked ribs. Right. And either fled or left or escaped up the mountain again, where he became exhausted from his cracked ribs and his cut hand and laid down or fell into this little shallow crevasse and died of exposure to hypothermia.

That was the disaster theory. And that was, you know, I mean they had that for a few years and somebody came along and said, I don't think that's right. That's right. Because they found out some of the things, like the site had melted some, and then things were in different positions they originally thought probably. They examined the ribs again and said they were actually not fractured before he died. Yeah, that they were just a little bent.

Yeah, from like after his death. Probably from the push of ice, the pressure from ice freezing on him again. Exactly. That'll crack your ribs in a second. Sure. Or bend your ribs. The big one though was what they found in the X-ray in 2001. Right. You know what they found? Mm-hmm. Should we take a break?

Oh, yeah. All right. We'll discover what they found right after this. Hey, fam, I'm Simone Boyce. I'm Danielle Robay. And we're the hosts of The Bright Side, the daily podcast from Hello Sunshine that is guaranteed to light up your day. Every weekday we bring you conversations with the culture makers who inspire us. Ooh, like our recent episode with Jacqueline Novak, host of your other favorite podcast, POOC.

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season. Watch season three of the Shondaland series on Netflix. Then fall in love all over again by listening to Bridgerton the Official Podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe to catch a new episode every Thursday. – What did they find, Chuck? They found a freaking arrowhead lodged in his shoulder, back shoulder. That was a verbatim quote from the press conference. This was a big deal. They missed it. For 10 years, they missed this thing.

And they found it, yeah, it was just a regular X-ray. And they said, wait a minute, that looks denser than bone. What is that? It's a triangle. It's a triangle and it was a 13 millimeter gash along a major artery in his chest. And they're like, he bled to death up there. Yeah, they said there's no way he would have survived this and it's unhealed. This is finally what killed him.

So this disaster theory that he got in an altercation but ultimately died of exposure or hypothermia was replaced by the murder theory. Which is very similar but there's some important nuances and differences. One, so the cracked rib thing, just throw that away. That was a red herring. But the altercation is still the same. He comes down the mountain, he gets in a fight of some sort,

goes back up the mountain with his cut hand, and while he's hanging out, maybe tending to his wound, maybe trying to figure out what to do next, that's my arrow impression. Message for you, sir. Yeah. Yeah, right in the back. In the back, from a distance they think, due to the penetration from the. Yeah, right in the back. In the back. Right. From a distance they think,

due to the penetration from the arrowhead, from about 30 meters. Yeah, it's a good shot. That is, it is a good shot, because it was a kill shot from 30 meters, 150 feet. That's a ways. Yeah. I can't quite put it into an easy analogy,

but that's a long way. Yeah. And the fact that it was in the back, he never saw it coming. And it would have killed him pretty quickly. It was a punk move is what it was. It was. Here's the thing, because his possessions were left intact, and because he had that defensive wound, they think that this was the result of his death, his murder was the

result of a personal conflict. There was no theft involved or anything like that. Right. Because his copper axe alone would have been pretty valuable at the time. And somebody would have taken it had they killed him for something like robbery. Yeah, so this was a vendetta. Yes. Or at least a personal fight that happened that day.

Yeah. Or maybe a long-standing feud. There's no way to tell. Here we reach the point where the historians and the archaeologists are like, we really can't say, but here are some ideas. For me, it's either the person who he fought came back for revenge. I think, and this is a total guess, but I was trained in history, so I'm allowed to do this. Sure.

He was... You were trained in history? Yeah, I was, I studied history in college. That's what they call it. They're like, this is how you do it. You train in history camp. Right. He was successful in that hand-to-hand combat and killed the other person,

whether it was offensive or defensive. I like to think it was defensive. He didn't have a choice, but the person's family came back and killed him up on the mountain. Gotcha. That's the current idea. Well, not that last part that it was his family,

but what I said leading up to that, everything about that, everything else about that. I'm really sorry, Chris Christofferson. That's the current idea of what happened at Etsy. I think, so you're not going with my jealous lover theory? No. Okay. No, I'm not.

All right. I'm... I think it was a woman with that arrow. You think the woman, a woman shot him? Yeah, jealous lover. I think he was stepping out. Oh. And he was like holding up his hands like, baby, baby, it wasn't me.

And she slices him with her implement of choice. And then dices him with the arrow. And then he's like, this is getting too serious. You're crazy. And so he heads up the mountains and she's like, I'll show you crazy. She turns into Glenn Close. She goes and forges an arrow. And then in that time it took her to forge that arrow from hardened molten, you know, flint. Flint. Chert.

Chert. He's up that hill a little bit and she's like, no problem. Watch this. Right in the back. I like that one too. All right. I'm going with family. Family? Because I mean... Yeah, you know the rule. Can't trust family.

Can't trust family. Can't trust family. So speaking of that chert, he did not have, he didn't have blanks. Yeah, so this is evidence that he didn't know how to create his own tools. Yeah, he couldn't replicate these tools which apparently were sort of on their last legs. Yeah, that was another thing too. So he did not have what he needed. Like imagine if you had like a tool, an axe, no, a knife. And it's made of flint and you use it over and over and over again.

It's gonna get worn down. And eventually it's gonna get so worn down that you just can't use it anymore. This is essentially the state of his arrowheads and his knife and some of his other stone tools in particular. That he was not in a position to defend himself with his own tools because he used them up. And I wonder if he's not making these in the village, if they're like, Ertzi's, you know, he's, have you guys noticed? He's on the way out. Like, we're not going to be making any more tools for Erzys.

Right, yeah. We don't have many. He'll just make do with what he's got. But he owes me money. So, should we talk about moss? This was astounding to me that this happened in the last few days. Because did you pick this out before this happened? Or was it serendipity or what? No, this is what I saw that made me say it's time. Okay, I got you. So, researchers found these moth spores that were inside of him that he had ingested and just on him and around him. 70% of the 75 species of these mosses and liverworts were not local,

and they basically said there's no way these would have been on the side of the mountain if not for him. Right, like a bird couldn't have transported it this far or something like that. Like, the ootsy brought these up here. And so in doing that and tracing like these mosses and spores and everything, they have... It's a big clue. They've been able to retrace his steps that lasts basically 33 hours of his life,

the last day and a half. And it was not a great day and a half for him. He had his hand wound by now. By the time we're coming in here, he's already got his hand wound. It's gotta be smarting. And it's a real problem for him too, because even if he could make tools,

he would have been really troubled to do anything, because he was right-handed, and that's where his wound, almost down to the bone was, was in his right hand. So that's a big problem for him right there. Yeah, so what they found in his lower colon, which would have been the last, I'm sorry, the oldest stuff that he had eaten that has not yet been. The turtle head.

Not, yeah, not turtle headed yet. Or I guess currently turtle headed. Were pine and spruce pollen. So they said, and it's kind of neat, that's what I love about this, like, historical forensics. Like, oh well, we know what was in his body and we know where that stuff is. It's not at certain altitudes. It was a high altitude forest, around 8200 feet. And they know because of where it was in his body, this is 33 hours before he died. But the middle tract of his colon, that's where all the secrets are, in the colon. It had pollen from hop corn beam and that's stuff from lower altitudes. It's from lower altitudes but also it grows only in the spring and summer.

It decays very quickly so it's not something that you would preserve and keep for the fall or the winter or whatever. So throw out the autumn theory. Yep. So they say he definitely died in the summer. Right. The spring, I guess. That means that he probably descended maybe all the way to the bottom of the valley within 12 hours, maybe nine to 12 hours of his death,

and then all the way back up again. Right, where he was found dead. And they figured all this out, they retraced all this, just from those spores and mosses. Amazing. They think maybe, so he's down in the valley to begin with or in the village, gets that hand wound, flees up to the tree line.

And then they think. Cause he's like the little lady always needs a few days to cool off. Right. Oh man, you're gonna get some email for that one. I retract my right by the way. So, and then he goes back down. They think to get some mosses because

they have antibacterial properties. Yeah, you can also wrap meat in it, apparently. Right. I guess keep it or whatever. But also, he may have wrapped his hand in it or something as well. Or maybe went and saw a doctor. Maybe. Then he goes back up to the tree, to above the tree line where he dies at about 10,500 feet. That's right. to above the tree line where he dies at about 10,500 feet.

And along the way he had that last meal of ibex and deer and bread and slow plums. Pretty good meal. Not bad. I wonder if he was panicked, if he knew like, I'm in a bad way because of this cut on my hand and my tools and arrowheads are not in good shape. I don't know, because it's interesting.

You only know that stuff from seeing it at that point in history. Like, it would have been like, oh boy, I've seen that kind of wound before on Tuk-Tuk, and he did not last long. But if you thought somebody was coming after you, and you knew that your arrowhead was useless, and your knife was like dull, and your stab in hand was cut to the bone.

Right. You probably wouldn't have had to have seen that before to be like, oh. Probably so. Well, he was in full retreat from what it looks like, right? Yeah. And that's why he was going up that mountain. That's what most people guess, yeah. So he was probably scared.

Yeah, which is sad. But that's how he spent his last day and a half kind of on the run up and down the mountain, which is pretty impressive that he was able to make, you know, he went up and down the mountain. Don't forget he was wearing moccasins stuffed with grass. And he was old for the time. Sure. And he had gingivitis.

Kind of a neat thing is they have found, they found some weird markers on his male sex chromosomes and they've actually traced some genetic relatives, at least 19 people. Living today. Yeah, in Austria. Not married, but related to Ötzi. Yeah, pretty neat. Yeah, I think so too.

So, check, there's another theory that says, hey, you know your whole murder theory, it's BS. Maybe the murder part is correct, but he was murdered ritually. This isn't a vendetta or anything like that. Utsi was buried. Right. They think that this was a ritual burial on top of a mountain. But, you know, it's not the kind of, maybe they just want a group that removed the organs and did that stuff, right? Yeah. So the premise of the burial theory, called the social theory,

is that he's not a snapshot of everyday life. Right. That he would have been so heavily laden with all of this stuff, because we didn't even say he had a bow, an arrow, quivers. Yeah, he had a lot of stuff. A knife, a hatchet.

He was wearing moccasins with grass, and they're kind of like, seriously, that's the best they could do at this time for hiking a mountain that's the shoes you wore? Like those aren't mountain hiking shoes at any point in history. And the fact that the shaft of the arrow was removed, I think they point to as an example of the idea

that he was buried, that he was killed ritually and buried in this spot. Oh, so they think the killing was a ritual killing too. Yes. Like a sacrificial killing? Yeah. Oh, I didn't get that part. And the other thing is they're saying like,

this stuff, these fancy Alexander McQueen leggings that he wore that were basically the predecessor of Lederhosen, that is some pretty nice stuff for a simple sheep herder to be wearing. This is what the social theory people are saying. They're like, we think this guy was actually kind of important and that he was buried here

as a sign, a symbol. And what they found or what they point to is that there's stelae, like monoliths, that were carved in the late Copper Age, a thousand or two thousand years after Ötzi, because he was born at the beginning of the Copper Age, that are depictions of somebody dressed a lot like Ötzi, and they think that these are like heroes

and legends, ancestors, and they're saying, this guy's wearing what these people were carving images of a thousand years later. Maybe he was kind of important, and maybe this is a burial. He also had some ornamentation too, didn't he? Yeah, like a marble bead. Yeah, which could mean something or could not.

But the fact that he had so much stuff with him does kind of support the idea that maybe it was a burial. And then the other- Like to send him into the afterlife with all the things he would need. Right, exactly. And then the other... Like to send him into the afterlife with all the things he would need. Right, exactly. And then the other one is no one's ever explained how he was so well preserved.

That apparently being frozen by ice doesn't cut it. Oh, really? Yeah, that other people have been found who died far later and were in way worse states of decay than Ötzi was. But they found no like chemical preservation evidence or anything? No, and admittedly both sides, if either one of them were being honest, they will say, we don't know how he was this well preserved. Quite a mystery. Still to this day.

As much as we know about him, he is still a mystery. He's our loving mystery man. That's right. If you want to know more about Utzi, go type OTZI in your favorite search bar, and it will bring up some fascinating stuff. And since I said that, it's time for Listener Man. I'm going to call this the accidental Iron Man. Hey guys, big fan for a long time.

I accidentally did my first Ironman in July 2018. And you might think, how in the world would that happen? I was thinking exactly that. Here's how that happens. I've been doing triathlon since 2015. I always planned on doing an Ironman at one point, or at some point. My plan was to do a half Ironman in 2018, do the full thing in 2019. I wanted to do the Ironman Lake Placid since it's reasonably close and has a lake swim as opposed to a river or an ocean swim. That's a hard race to get into though because it sells out so fast. I got an email telling me registration was open and in my excitement I misread it and

thought it was for the half. So I signed up and realized after the fact that it was the entire 140.6 race and not the 70.3. Triathlons don't do refunds. So I paid my $800 plus entry fee and couldn't get it back. I could have deferred for a year, but it's decided just to go for it. And I finished the race in 15 hours, two minutes and 43 seconds.

Nice work. And that is from John Pataniak. and I emailed John back and it's like, you want to give me a couple of little tidbits here for listener mail. And he said, sure. And he wrote back and he said, one thing I can say is it really takes over your personal life. At my peak, I was training 20 hours a week. And he said, that is literally just pool, bike or running. He said, doesn't count

Travel to and from the gym cooking meals prepping equipment He said is literally like a part-time job and he said the race was a lot of fun He said the Lake Placid course goes through the old Olympic structures from the 1980 Olympics Oh cool, and you finish at the finish line in the speed skating oval. Oh, that's neat. Yeah, it's pretty cool He said I like that. It's like urban exploration Iron Man. And he said, one of the cool things they do if you're a first timer is you wear an orange wristband so all the volunteers and crowd will give you extra support. And it says, I will become one on it.

And he said, it really works. And he said, and finally at the end, the race is so meaningful to so many people. Everyone has their own story But almost nothing is better after a year Of training than hearing you are Iron Man when he crossed the finish line. That's awesome They have Ozzy singing it. I would I would too. Who else? I don't know. I guess Dio could. Again. That is John Petoniak. Dio is dead. Oh, is he? Yeah, Ronnie James Dio has passed on. Since when?

Within the last couple of years. Okay. Yeah. One of the coolest tattoos I've ever seen, somebody got like on their arm, their forearm. I've seen that. So that when they make like the devil horns or whatever, it's Ronnie Dio making the devil horns and the person's fingers turn into your arm.

Yeah, it's really neat. It is astounding. I saw that and I thought, man, that's the coolest tattoo I've ever seen. I think it might be. It's pretty. Hats off to Chris Christopherson's manager who actually is the person with that tattoo.

That's right. If you wanna get in touch with us, like who is that? John Patoniak. Thanks, John. If you wanna get in touch with us like John, congratulations too. That's right. you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. You may know Jackson Pollock, the painter famous for his iconic drip paintings. But what do you know about his wife, artist Lee Krasner, on Death of an Artist, Krasner and Pollock, the story of the artist who reset the market for American abstract painting, just maybe not the one you're thinking of? Listen to Death of an Artist, Krasner and Pollock on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,

or wherever you listen to podcasts. From the Scopes Monkey trial to OJ Simpson, trials have always made us reflect on the world we live in. I'm Mira Hayward and my podcast, History on Trial, will explore fascinating trials from American history. Join me in revealing the true story behind the headlines and discover how the legal battles of the past have shaped our present. Listen and subscribe to History on Trial, now on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Hey there, I'm Dr. Maya Shankar and I'm a scientist who studies human behavior. Many of us have experienced a moment in our lives that changes everything, that instantly divides our life into a before and an after. On my podcast, A Slight Change of Plans, I talk to people about navigating these moments. Their stories are full of candor and hard-won wisdom. And you'll hear from scientists who teach us how we can be more resilient in the face of change. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.