Ice Man

Super hero, nickname for jet fighter pilot in Tom Cruise classic, and 5000 year old corps found in a glacier; what do all three of these things have in common, there all called ice man. Unfortunately our paper is on the later of the three, but all the while a very intriguing topic. Dug out of a glacier in northern Italy more than a decade ago, the Ice man nicknamed Otzi, freezes, in all sense of the word, a day in the life of a person 5000 years ago. With the many theories and hypothesis about how Otzi died it is still, to a certain degree, a mystery.

A widely accepted theory is that Otzi died in a battle of some kind. Arrows and a knife found with Otzi contained blood from a second and third individual other then Otzi himself. Blood on the left side of Otzi's goat skin coat indicates a fourth person that Otzi may have been carrying for a distance unknown to modern man, but back then, I'm sure the ice man would have known how far he was carrying his deadweight, probably good as dead, buddy.

Evidence suggests that Otzi was killed in an epic boundary dispute between several individuals. Thomas Loy, an archaeologist at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia believes that Otzi managed to rub out two barbarians with the same arrow, retrieving it from the smoldering cadaver each time, until the third time when his luck ran out and he broke his weapon of choice, the arrow. Thinking one arrow should be enough didn't do Otzi any good then, now arrowless thanks to his ill preparation and lack of prudence, he desperately tried to fix his broken arrow, only to come up short, dieing before the task could be finished. The critical injuries were sustained as early as 48 hours before his death. One of those injuries was an arrow in the back and the other was a considerable cut in his hand. After sustaining the injuries Otzi went and stacked his gear on a ledge and then slumped over a rock and died.

John Rienhard, a National Geographic Society explorer-in-residence and expert on mummies and ritual sacrifice, believes that Loy's theory may have too many coincidences.

Rienhard thinks the high quality of Otzi's coat, axe and knife, and the placement of the body on the highest point on a pass leads to ritual sacrifice. Reinhard does believe that a fight could have been possible, but within the context of a ritual. He thinks that Otzi may have been lured there and then killed.

Otzi, the oldest