How science is giving voice to mummies such as Otzi the Iceman

Researchers recently managed to recreate the voice of 5,300-year-old Ötzi the iceman by recreating his vocal tract. The technology is promising and could be used to digitally produce the voices of other mummified remains. But how does it work and what else could it be used for?

When you make a vowel sound (aah, ee, oh, ooh and so on), three parts of your anatomy play important roles: your lungs, your larynx and the tube made from your throat and mouth. Your lungs provide the airflow that powers the sound. If the flow becomes too weak it will turn into a whisper instead.

Your larynx, or voice box, sits about midway between your lungs and your lips, just behind your Adam's apple. The part you can feel from the outside is the cartilage protecting and supporting the vocal folds (or vocal cords) inside. These are a pair of soft, lip-like structures that run from your Adam's apple to the back of your windpipe.

You can bring these folds firmly together across your windpipe to close it off completely – you do this when you cough or choke. You can also bring them across so they just touch, and if you do that and then breathe out they vibrate in much the same way your lips do if you blow a raspberry. These vibrating vocal folds are the source of sound for a vowel. If you say aah while you press your fingers gently either side of your Adam's apple you can feel the vibrations in your larynx.

Everyone's voice has a natural pitch based on the size of their larynx and in particular the length and thickness of their vocal folds. Your natural pitch is what comes out when your throat muscles are fairly relaxed and you don't try to speak too loudly. Women have shorter, thinner vocal folds than men and so they have generally a higher natural pitch.

If your windpipe ended just above the larynx then you would just be able to produce buzzing sounds. The lowest frequency in the buzzing sound is part of your natural pitch, but there is also energy at many higher frequencies included in that sound. It's the airway that shapes the buzz sound into a particular vowel.

We can think of this airway as a tube. You can change the length of that tube by protruding your lips, as you do when you say ooh, or by moving your tongue. When you say aah, your tongue rolls back out of your mouth and into your throat so the lower half of the tube is narrow and the upper half is wide, for example.

Every tube has a series of resonance frequencies that relates to its length and its cross-sectional area. These are the frequencies of sound that pass along the tube most easily and with least energy loss, so if we have a buzz sound generated at the larynx end of the tube, the sound at the lips' end will be the original buzz, but with the resonance frequencies of the tube sounding much louder than any other frequencies in the buzz.

When you listen to a vowel sound it's these resonance frequencies you are using to decide which vowel you are hearing. Changing the position of your tongue and lips changes the length and cross-section of the tube, which changes the resonances and ultimately the vowel you hear. Ötzi and his peers To know how Ötzi the Iceman sounded we need to know how long and how thick his vocal folds were – that tells us about the natural pitch of his voice. We also need to know how long his airway was and about the cross-sectional area to work out the resonance frequencies. His tongue and lips will have been preserved in one particular position which will only give us information about a single vowel sound. So if we are to work out how he sounded for other vowels we also need to know a bit about the size of his tongue and where it joined to his windpipe. Knowing this allows us to work out the other possible tube-shapes he could make and calculate their related resonances.

But how can you actually work all this out? It's pretty simple, all you really need is a CT scan, which uses X-rays to create detailed images of the inside of the body. This allows us to measure all these anatomical dimensions. We can then use that information to make a computer model to synthesise what his voice might have sounded like.

The first use of X-rays to explore mummified remains is thought to have been by Walter Konig in 1896, very soon after X-rays were first discovered. CT scans have been conducted on mummies for more than 40 years, with the popularity of the technique increasing rapidly over the last decade or so. However, the study of Ötzi the Iceman seems to be the first time the CT data has been used to synthesise a voice.

In a study of 137 mummies published in the Lancet in 2013, CT scans were used to show that, contrary to much current thinking, disease of the arteries was common in many pre-industrial populations. For speech, the CT scanning technique could similarly provide us with valuable information about the dimensions of the vocal system for any mummified body. And with enough different sets of scans we might be able to track trends in voice over time, such as changes in the typical natural frequency due to nutrition and body size.

One of the big open questions about speech is exactly when the ability to communicate in this way evolved, and there is quite a controversy about whether Neanderthals, for example, could speak. Sadly the CT scanning techniques can't help us with this as they rely on the preservation of soft tissue. The earliest hominid remains are fossilised which means only the bone structure has survived. The absence of lung, larynx, airway or tongue information in these fossils makes our ability to predict their capacity for speech very much less certain. At about 5,300-years-old Ötzi is the earliest European mummy in existence, but deliberately mummified bodies as old as 7,000 years have been found in South America. Spirit Cave Man, found in North America in 1940, has been dated at 9,000-years-old, so if CT scans were made, even older voices than Ötzi's could perhaps be heard one day.
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Reference:

Phys.org. 2016. “How science is giving voice to mummies such as Otzi the Iceman”. Phys.org. Posted: October 3, 2016. Available online: http://phys.org/news/2016-10-science-voice-mummies-otzi-iceman.html

Ötzi’s maternal genetic line originated in the Alps and is now extinct

A recent study on the DNA of Helicobacter pylori, the pathogen extracted from the stomach of Ötzi, the ice mummy who has provided valuable information on the life of Homo Sapiens. New research at the European Academy of Bolzano/Bozen (EURAC) further clarifies the genetic history of the man who lived in the Eastern Alps over 5,300 years ago.

In 2012 a complete analysis of the Y chromosome (transmitted from fathers to their sons) showed that Ötzi’s paternal genetic line is still present in modern-day populations. In contrast, studies of mitochondrial DNA (transmitted solely via the mother to her offspring) left many questions still open. To clarify whether the genetic maternal line of the Iceman, who lived in the eastern Alps over 5,300 years ago, has left its mark in current populations, researchers at the European Academy of Bolzano/Bozen (EURAC) have now compared his mitochondrial DNA with 1,077 modern samples. The study concluded that the Iceman’s maternal line — named K1f — is now extinct.

A second part of the study, a comparison of genetic data of the mummy with data from other European Neolithic samples, provided information regarding the origin of K1f: researchers postulate that the mitochondrial lineage of the Iceman originated locally in the Alps, in a population that did not grow demographically.

The study, which also clarifies Ötzi’s genetic history in the context of European demographic changes from Neolithic times onwards, was published in Scientific Reports (open access).

“The mummy’s mitochondrial DNA was the first to be analysed, in 1994.” says Valentina Coia, a biologist at EURAC and first author of the study. “It was relatively easy to analyse and — along with the Y chromosome — allows us to go back in time, telling us about the genetic history of an individual. Despite this, the genetic relationship between the Iceman’s maternal lineage and lineages found in modern populations was not yet clear.”

The most recent study regarding the analysis of Ötzi’s complete mitochondrial DNA, conducted in 2008 by other research teams showed that the Iceman’s maternal lineage — named K1f — was no longer traceable in modern populations. The study did not make clear, however, whether this was due to an insufficient number of comparison samples or whether K1f was indeed extinct. Valentina Coia explains further: “The first hypothesis could not be ruled out given that the study considered only 85 modern comparison samples from the K1 lineage — the genetic lineage that also includes that of Ötzi — which comprised few samples from Europe and especially none from the eastern Alps, which are home to populations that presumably have a genetic continuity with the Iceman. To test the two hypotheses, we needed to compare Ötzi’s mitochondrial DNA with a larger number of modern samples.” The EURAC research team, in collaboration with the Sapienza University of Rome and the University of Santiago de Compostela, thus compared the mitochondrial DNA of the Iceman with that from 1,077 individuals belonging to the K1 lineage, of which 42 samples originated from the eastern Alps and were for the first time analysed in this study. The new comparison showed that neither the Iceman’s lineage nor any other evolutionarily close lineages are present in modern populations: the researchers therefore lean towards the hypothesis that Ötzi’s maternal genetic branch has died out.

It remains to be explained why Ötzi’s maternal lineage has disappeared, while his paternal lineage– named G2a–still exists in Europe. To clarify this point, researchers at EURAC compared Ötzi’s mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosome with available data from numerous ancient samples found at 14 different archaeological sites throughout Europe. The results showed that the paternal lineage of Ötzi was very common in different regions in Europe during the Neolithic age, while his maternal lineage probably existed only in the Alps.

Putting together the genetic data on the ancient and modern samples, namely those already present in the literature and those analysed in this study, researchers have now proposed the following scenario to explain the Iceman’s genetic history: Ötzi’s paternal lineage, G2a, is part of an ancient genetic substrate that arrived in Europe from the Near East with the migrations of the first Neolithic peoples some 8,000 years ago. Additional migrations and other demographic events occurring after the Neolithic Age in Europe then partially replaced G2a with other lineages, except in geographically isolated areas such as Sardinia. In contrast, the Iceman’s maternal branch originated locally in the eastern Alps at least 5,300 years ago. The same migrations that have replaced only in part his paternal lineage caused the extinction of his maternal lineage that was inherited in a small and demographic stationary population. The groups from the eastern Alps in fact significantly increased in size only from the Bronze Age onwards, as evidenced by archaeological studies conducted in the territory inhabited by the Iceman.
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Reference:

Past Horizons. 2016. “Ötzi’s maternal genetic line originated in the Alps and is now extinct”. Past Horizons. Posted: January 14, 2016. Available online: http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/01/2016/otzis-maternal-genetic-line-originated-in-the-alps-and-is-now-extinct

Ötzi's non-human DNA: Opportunistic pathogen discovered in Iceman tissue biopsy

Ötzi's human genome was decoded from a hip bone sample taken from the 5,300 year old mummy. However the tiny sample weighing no more than 0.1 g provides so much more information. A team of scientists from EURAC in Bolzano/Bozen together with colleagues from the University of Vienna successfully analysed the non-human DNA in the sample. They found evidence for the presence of Treponema denticola, an opportunistic pathogen involved in the development of periodontal disease. Thus, by just looking at the DNA, the researchers could support a CT-based diagnosis made last year which indicated that the Iceman suffered from periodontitis. The results of the current study have recently been published in the online scientific journal PLOS ONE.

Much of what we know about Ötzi -- for example what he looked like or that he suffered from lactose intolerance -- stems from a tiny bone sample which allowed the decoding of his genetic make-up. Now, however, the team of scientists have examined more closely the part of the sample consisting of non-human DNA. "What is new is that we did not carry out a directed DNA analysis but rather investigated the whole spectrum of DNA to better understand which organisms are in this sample and what is their potential function," is how Frank Maixner, from the EURAC Institute for Mummies and the Iceman in Bozen/Bolzano, described the new approach which the team of scientists are now pursuing.

"This 'non-human' DNA mostly derives from bacteria normally living on and within our body. Only the interplay between certain bacteria or an imbalance within this bacterial community might cause certain diseases. Therefore it is highly important to reconstruct and understand the bacterial community composition by analysing this DNA mixture," said Thomas Rattei, Professor of Bioinformatics from the Department of Microbiology and Ecosystem Science at the University of Vienna.

Unexpectedly the team of scientists, specialists in both microbiology as well as bioinformatics, detected in the DNA mixture a sizeable presence of a particular bacterium: Treponema denticola, an opportunistic pathogen involved in the development of periodontitis. Thus this finding supports the computer tomography based diagnosis that the Iceman suffered from periodontitis. Even more surprising is that the analysis of a tiny bone sample can still, after 5,300 years, provide us with the information that this opportunistic pathogen seems to have been distributed via the bloodstream from the mouth to the hip bone. Furthermore, the investigations indicate that these members of the human commensal oral microflora were old bacteria which did not colonise the body after death.

Besides the opportunistic pathogen, the team of scientists led by Albert Zink -- head of the EURAC Institute for Mummies and the Iceman -- also detected Clostridia-like bacteria in the Iceman bone sample which are at present most presumably in a kind of dormant state. Under hermetically sealed, anaerobic conditions, however, these bacteria can re-grow and degrade tissue. This discovery may well play a significant part in the future conservation of the world-famous mummy. "This finding indicates that altered conditions for preserving the glacier mummy, for example when changing to a nitrogen-based atmosphere commonly used for objects of cultural value, will require additional micro-biological monitoring," explained the team of scientists who will now look closer at the microbiome of the Iceman.
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References:

Science Daily. 2014. “Ötzi's non-human DNA: Opportunistic pathogen discovered in Iceman tissue biopsy”. Science Daily. Posted: July 15, 2014. Available online: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/07/140715085055.htm

ScienceShot: World's Oldest Blood Cells Found on Iceman

When Ötzi the Iceman was alive 5300 years ago, eating ibex and deer and traipsing over the Alps, his veins pulsed with blood. But when Ötzi's frozen, mummified body was discovered in 1991, his vessels were empty; scientists assumed his blood had degraded over time. Now, a team of researchers has zoomed in on two spots on the Iceman's body: a shoulder wound found with an embedded arrowhead and a hand lesion resembling a stab wound. The scientists used atomic force microscopy, a visualization method with resolution of less than a nanometer, to scan the wounds for blood residue. They discovered red blood cells (inset)—the oldest in the world to be found intact—as well as fibrin, a protein needed for blood to clot, they report today in Journal of the Royal Society Interface. The presence of fibrin indicates that Ötzi didn't die immediately after being wounded. Next, the researchers plan to study the blood cells for changes in molecular structure due to dehydration and aging. Such analyses could help forensic experts pick up on more subtle changes that reveal the age of younger blood cells, such as those from crime scenes.
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References:

Williams, Sarah C.P. 2012. "ScienceShot: World's Oldest Blood Cells Found on Iceman". Science. Posted: May 1, 2012. Available online: http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/05/scienceshot-worlds-oldest-blood.html

Ice Mummy May Have Smashed Eye in Fall

CT scans suggest the Iceman may have shattered his eye in a fall after he was wounded by an arrow.

A sharp incision in his right eye may have contributed to the rapid demise of Ötzi the Iceman, the famous mummy who died in the Italian Alps more than 5,000 years ago.

Twenty years after two hikers stumbled upon the Iceman in a melting glacier, new analyses have revealed that a deep cut likely led to heavy bleeding in the man's eye. In the cold, high-altitude conditions where he was found, that kind of injury would have been tough to recover from.

The official opinion remains that an arrow in his left shoulder was the cause of death for Ötzi. But the new study raises the possibility -- for some, at least -- that he fell over after being shot by an arrow. And, at higher than 10,000 feet in elevation, his alpine fall may have made the situation much worse.

"Maybe he fell down or maybe he had a fight up there, nobody knows," said Wolfgang Recheis, a physicist in the radiology department at the University of Innsbruck in Austria. "With this cut alone, at 3,250 meters, it would have been a deadly wound up there. Bleeding to death in the late afternoon when it was getting cold up there, this could be really dangerous."

Ever since his discovery in 1991, Ötzi has been measured, photographed, X-rayed, CT-scanned and endlessly speculated about. The Iceman Photoscan website allows anyone to scrutinize every inch of the body, which belonged to a 5'3", 110-pound, 45-year old man.

Ten years ago, researchers found a flint arrowhead buried in Ötzi's left shoulder blade inside a two-centimeter (0.8-inch) wide hole. They concluded that the arrow pierced a major artery and killed him within minutes. At a conference in September, experts reaffirmed that assessment.

But in one of the latest studies, Recheis used the most advanced CT-scanning technology available to take a closer look at Ötzi's right eye. Earlier examinations had shown a crack in the skull in that spot. The new work revealed a deep incision in the same place.

Scans also revealed iron crystals around the right eye and forehead, which produce a bluish hue. And since the region's rocks are naturally low in iron, Recheis and colleagues suspect the iron is a sign of a hematoma, or massive bleeding outside of the blood vessels. A biopsy is needed for confirmation.

Despite the officially stated opinion on Ötzi's cause of death, Recheis is not convinced that the arrow wound was deadly on its own.

"My South Tyrolean colleagues say the arrow most probably hit the sub-clavicular artery or other vital vessel and thus the Iceman died," Recheis said. "But there are doubts. It's justified that the arrow did not hit any vital vessels or nerves as far as we can say from the data we have."

"This could be the first thing," he added. "He was up there and shot by an arrow. And then he fell down, cut his eye and bled to death."

Albert Zink, head of the EURAC Institute for Mummies and the Iceman in Bolzano, Italy, was surprised and perplexed to hear of these new claims. At a conference this fall, he said, a whole table-full of experts discussed the evidence and unanimously agreed that the arrow killed the Iceman.

The shoulder wound, he said, was clearly fresh and bleeding heavily when Ötzi died.

"It is impossible that he walked around or that this was an old injury because this was a very severe injury," Zink said. "If you don't have the possibility to do surgery, you cannot survive from this for longer than 10 or 15 minutes."

The eye injury could have happened from a fall after Ötzi was shot or from a blow to the head by his attacker. But whatever the cause, Zink is sure that it was secondary to the arrow strike.

"It's true that there might be new evidence that there was a little crack in the skin, so maybe he was bleeding from skull trauma," he added. "But it doesn't change anything in the end."

According to some news reports, the new findings could support a theory that Ötzi was the victim of a mountaineering accident. Both Recheis and Zink agreed that this was unlikely. Based on his muscle strength and patterns of joint degeneration, the Iceman was a fit and experienced climber. And he was near an easy path when he died.
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References:

Sohn, Emily. 2011. "Ice Mummy May Have Smashed Eye in Fall". Discovery News. Posted: November 21, 2011. Available online: http://news.discovery.com/history/iceman-oetzi-eye-injury-111121.html

The Ice Mummy: Little-Known Facts

Exactly 20 years ago, on Sept. 19, 1991, German hikers Erika and Helmut Simon spotted something brown while walking near a melting glacier in the Ötztal Alps in South Tyrol.

As they got closer, they realized with horror that it wasn't just some sort of rubbish: a human corpse was lying with the chest against a flat rock.

Only the back of the head, the bare shoulders and part of the back emerged from the ice and meltwater.

The hikers thought the body belonged to an unfortunate victim of a mountaineering accident a few years back. In fact, they discovered one of the world's oldest and best preserved mummies.

To commemorate the 20th anniversary of this sensational discovery, here are 20 known and lesser known facts about the Neothiltic frozen mummy.

1. An incredible chain of coincidences allowed the Iceman to remain intact: he was covered by snow shortly after his death and later by ice; the deep gully where the Iceman lay prevented the body from being ground up by the base of the glacier; the body was exposed to damaging sunlight and wind only for a short time in 1991 between the time the mummy thawed and the accidental discovery.

2. It was an Austrian reporter, Karl Wendl, who first named the mummy "Ötzi," referring to the Ötzal Alps where it was found. According to a resolution by the South Tyrol Provincial Government, the official name for the mummy is "Der Mann aus dem Eis" -- "L'Uomo venuto dal ghiaccio" (The man who came from ice).

3. Soon after the mummy was recovered, a harsh controversy arose on which soil -- Italian or Austrian -- it was found. A survey of the border carried out on Oct. 2, 1991 established that the mummy lay 303.67 feet from the border in South Tyrol, in Italy.

4. Radio carbon dating established that the Ötzi lived around 5,000 years ago, between 3350 and 3100 B.C.

5. Recent investigations established that he had brown eyes, not blue as previously thought.

6. Ötzi was probably a bearded, furrow faced man. He was about 5 foot, 3 inches tall and weighed 110 pounds.

7. He lacked a twelfth pair of ribs -- a rare anatomical anomaly.

8. The Iceman had a remarkable diastema, or natural gap, between his two upper incisors. He also lacked wisdom teeth. Even though he suffered from cavities, worn teeth and periodontal diseases, he still had all his teeth when he died at around 45.

9. Ötzi could have been a little better endowed. The man's natural mummification and dehydration in the Alpine glacier produced a "collapse of the genitalia," which left the Iceman with an almost invisible member.

10. The Iceman's last meal probably consisted of a porridge of einkorn, meat and vegetables. Researchers are still investigating the sampled material to determine the exact nature on the Iceman’s last meal.

11. Three gallbladder stones were recently found which, in combination with the previously identified atherosclerosis, show that Ötzi’s diet may have been richer in animal products than previously thought.

12. The Iceman's stomach also contained 30 different types of pollen, which ended up there with the food he ate, the water he drank and the air he breathed. The pollen showed that he died in the spring or early summer.

13. Analysis of the isotopic composition of Ötzi's tooth enamel and bones suggest that the man was born and lived in what is now South Tyrol. He probably spent his childhood in the upper Eisack Valley or the lower Puster Valley. He lived at least ten years in the Vinschgau prior to his death.

14. Among the clothing and items found with the mummy, one of the most important pieces is the copper-bladed axe. Archaeological experiments showed that the axe could fell a yew tree in 35 minutes without sharpening.

15. Ötzi's body is covered with over 50 tattoos made with fine incisions into which charcoal was rubbed. In the shape of lines and crosses, they were probably used as pain-relieving treatments. Indeed, the tattooed areas correspond to skin acupuncture lines, which predate acupunture in Asia by two thousand years.

16. Many theories have been proposed on Ötzi' social status. Among the various theories, the Iceman was identified with a shaman, a mineral prospector looking for ore deposits in the mountains, a hunter, a trader, a shepherd, and a man banished from his community.

17. The Iceman had been involved in a fight shortly before his death. He was shot with an arrow which pierced the subclavian artery and also suffered a violent blow to the head just before dying.

18. Ötzi's belonged to the European genetic haplogroup K. He was probably infertile.

19. Ötzi's constitution was athletic. He was more a wanderer than a manual worker. Recent research by Albert Zink at the EURAC Institute for Mummies and the Iceman in Bolzano, found signs of enthesopathy (an inflammatory disease of bone attachments) in the knees, which indicate that the Neolithic man spent many hours wandering in the mountains.

20. Claims of a Tutankhamen-style curse refer to seven strange deaths which occurred just a couple of years after German hiker Helmut Simon and his wife Erika discovered the frozen mummy. The seven dead people were either involved in the recovery of the mummy or in the scientific investigation. One of them was Helmut Simon, whose body was found trapped in ice in 2004, just like his famous find.

In reality, hundreds of individuals have worked on the Iceman project. Although sad, it's not so peculiar that some of those people have died since the mummy's discovery.


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References:

Lorenzi, Rossella. 2011. "The Ice Mummy: Little-Known Facts". Discovery News. Posted: September 19, 2011. Available online: http://news.discovery.com/history/iceman-discovery-110919.html

The Iceman's last meal: goat

Researchers examine the stomach contents of a famous 5,300-year-old mummy

Outside of the Nancy Grace show, few people have had their final hours as poked, prodded and scrutinized as much as Ötzi, the “Iceman” who died high in the Italian Alps 5,300 years ago.

Hikers discovered his frozen, mummified body in 1991. Two decades later, scientists have a good idea of what happened to Ötzi: Fleeing pursuers, he retreated to the mountains only to be shot in the back with an arrow. But even today, the Iceman is still giving up surprises.

New, more detailed radiological images of the mummy have revealed his stomach for the first time and shown that he didn’t die hungry. Within an hour of his murder, Ötzi ate a big meal mostly of the wild goat called ibex, reports a team led by Albert Zink, head of the Institute for Mummies and the Iceman in Bolzano, Italy.

“We now think that he must have felt quite safe, because otherwise he wouldn’t have had this big meal,” Zink says. “This was a really big surprise.” The work was published online August 17 in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

The Iceman may have eaten meat fairly regularly, the scientists suggest; the new scans also uncovered three gallstones, a sign that his diet could have been richer in animal products than researchers thought. And newfound signs of heavy strain in Ötzi’s knees may mean he walked a lot in mountainous terrain — as opposed to being a valley dweller who wandered up high just before his death.

In life, Ötzi was a brown-eyed, long-haired man in his mid-40s who stood 5 foot 3 inches tall, average height for the Copper Age. In death, he became one of the world’s best-preserved mummies, thanks to the ice that encased him soon after his murder. When climbers found Ötzi sticking out of a retreating glacier front in September 1991, scientists rushed his body into a climate- and humidity-controlled cell so he wouldn’t thaw.

Until now, the closest researchers had gotten to Ötzi’s last meal was locating and taking samples from his colon. It contained the remains of several meals, including the meat of red deer and ibex along with vegetables and grains like einkorn, a local wheat.

But in 2005 Zink’s team took new and more detailed X-ray computed tomography images of the mummy, quickly sliding the frozen corpse in and out of a hospital scanner. Those images revealed an organ once thought to be part of the colon but now recognizable as the long-sought stomach. After death, many of the Iceman’s organs shrank and moved from their original locations, and nobody had recognized the stomach because it had shifted into the upper abdomen, Zink says.

In November, the researchers pulled some of Ötzi’s stomach contents out through an incision in the abdominal wall. Preliminary DNA analysis of the fatty tissue shows it came from an ibex.

“What we have found is that he consumed an omnivorous diet,” says Klaus Oeggl, a paleobotanist at the University of Innsbruck in Austria who is analyzing the nonmeat parts of the stomach contents. The Iceman’s last several meals contained a mix of meat, vegetables and grains, but with a lot more meat in his final meal.

To Zink, a full stomach suggests that Ötzi wasn’t actively fleeing from his pursuers just before he died. Oeggl, however, speculates that the Iceman could have gotten a head start on those chasing him, then sat down for a break before an enemy surprised and shot him from behind.

“I’ve been on top of this particular mountain, and it’s an ideal place to stop and have a rest, maybe have something to eat,” adds Frank Rühli, head of the Center for Evolutionary Medicine at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. Once the arrow hit Ötzi, Rühli and other scientists reported in 2007, it tore open an artery and sent him into fatal hemorrhagic shock. He died on the spot.

Other evidence supports the theory that the Iceman had been under stress in the days before he died. In his last 33 hours, Ötzi moved from up near the timber line to down among the trees and up again into the realm of ice, as shown by pollen grains from various alpine plant species lodged in his body.

Ötzi also had a deep laceration on his right hand that he received at least several days before he died.

One factor that may have made the Iceman’s life uncomfortable — though it certainly didn’t kill him — was the state of his teeth. Rühli and his colleagues recently took a close look at Ötzi’s teeth and found that the Iceman had a lot of cavities. “The whole oral health of the Iceman was much worse than we had thought before,” says Rühli.

In October, Iceman scientists will gather in Bolzano for a 20th anniversary symposium to talk about what they’ve learned about the life and death of Ötzi. That will probably include the first complete analysis of the Iceman’s nuclear DNA, which has been finished but not yet formally published.

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References:

Witze, Alexandra. 2011. "The Iceman's last meal: goat". Science News. Posted: August 22, 2011. Available online: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/333533/title/The_Icemans_last_meal_goat

The Iceman's Last Meal

Less than 2 hours before he hiked his last steps in the Tyrolean Alps 5000 years ago, Ötzi the Iceman fueled up on a last meal of ibex meat. That was the conclusion of a talk here last week at the 7th World Congress on Mummy Studies, during which researchers—armed with Ötzi's newly sequenced genome and a detailed dental analysis—also concluded that the Iceman had brown eyes and probably wasn't much of a tooth brusher.


Source: © South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology

Caption: Uncovered. New DNA findings are fleshing out the picture of Ötzi's last minutes.


The Iceman, discovered in the Italian Alps in 1991 some 5200 years after his death, has been a gold mine of information about Neolithic life, as researchers have extensively studied his gear—copper ax, hide and leather clothing, and accessories—and his body. Previous research on the Iceman's meals focused on fecal material removed from his bowels. The contents showed that he dined on red deer meat and possibly cereal some 4 hours before his death.

But a team led by microbiologist Frank Maixner of the Institute for Mummies and the Iceman in Bolzano, Italy, recently reexamined computed tomography scans taken in 2005 and spotted, for the first time, the Iceman's stomach. As the researchers reported at the meeting, the organ had moved upward to an unusual position, and it looked full. When they took a sample of the stomach contents and sequenced the DNA of the animal fibers they found, they discovered that Ötzi, just 30 to 120 minutes before his death, had dined on the meat of an Alpine ibex, an animal that frequents high elevations and whose body parts were once thought to possess medicinal qualities.

The new findings are "cutting edge" says Niels Lynnerup, a specialist in forensic medicine at the University of Copenhagen. "We are now inching our way to the last minutes of the Iceman."

In a separate presentation, dentist Roger Seiler and anatomist Frank Rühli of the Centre for Evolutionary Medicine at the University of Zürich, examined the dental health of the Iceman, who probably died between the age of 35 and 40. Previously, researchers examining radiological images of his teeth discerned no trace of cavities or other dental problems. But the Swiss team created new three-dimensional images of the ancient traveler's dentition. These showed that the Iceman suffered a blunt force trauma to two teeth—possibly a blow to the mouth—at least several days before his death and was plagued by both periodontal disease and cavities. The cavities, Seiler said in his talk, confirm that the Iceman ate a diet abounding in carbohydrates, such as bread or cereal, and reveal that he possessed a "heavy bacterial dose on these teeth."

Also at the meeting, researchers led by geneticist Angela Graefen of the Institute for Mummies and the Iceman reported that they have succeeded in sequencing the Iceman's whole genome, despite the highly fragmented nuclear DNA. The genome has already revealed some surprises. One preliminary finding shows that the Iceman probably had brown eyes rather than the blue eyes found in many facial reconstructions done by artists. Graefen and her colleagues are also examining the DNA to see if Ötzi possessed genetic predispositions to diseases such as arthritis, which other researchers have diagnosed based on radiological and other evidence.

Lynnerup calls this new line of genetic research on the Iceman "a major milestone." Molecular anthropologist Christina Warinner of the University of Zürich agrees, but she thinks the best is yet to come. Last year, she notes, a research team sequenced another ancient human genome from a 4000-year-old human hair preserved in Greenland's permafrost. "The real jump forward [in understanding the antiquity of some inherited diseases] will happen when we have not just one or two ancient genomes, but hundreds, she says. "Technologically, this isn't very far off, but we're still at the beginning of this process."
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References:

Pringle, Heather. 2011. "The Iceman's Last Meal". Science. Posted: June 20, 2011. Available online: http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/06/the-icemans-last-meal.html

Gene Map to Give Insight into 5,200-year-old Iceman

Iceman, the Neolithic mummy found accidentally in the Eastern Alps by German hikers in 1991, has offered researchers all sorts of clues to life 5,200 years ago, from his goat-hide coat to the meat and unleavened bread in his stomach to the arrow wound in his shoulder.

Now, scientists stand poised to find out a whole lot more about Iceman, who also goes by Ötzi, Frozen Fritz and Similaun Man.

They recently finished sequencing the Iceman's genome, which took about three months – a feat made possible by whole genome sequencing technology. With that map of his genes in hand, researchers are moving onto to a whole new array of questions, according to Albert Zink, head of the European Institute for Mummies and the Iceman at the European Academy of Bozen/Bolzano (EURAC) in Italy.

"Some are very simple, like so 'What was really the eye color of the Iceman? What was really his hair color?'" Zink said. There are more complicated questions, too. Zink and others are curious about any genetic evidence of disease in the Iceman and the composition of his immune system.
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References:

Parry, Wynne. 2010. "Gene Map to Give Insight into 5,200-year-old Iceman". Live Science. Posted: August 5, 2010. Available online: http://www.livescience.com/history/ice-man-genome-sequenced-100804.html