Ötzi, the Iceman
Hikers in the Alps found a body in the melting ice, thought to be a lost climber. He turned out to be 5,300 years old.
What was reported
On 19 September 1991, Helmut and Erika Simon, German tourists hiking in the Ötztal Alps near the border between Austria and Italy, spotted a body emerging from melting ice. Officials at first assumed it was a mountaineer who had died in recent decades.
As the body and belongings were recovered, it became clear he was prehistoric: a man with a copper axe, a flint knife, a bow, arrows, and clothes of leather and grass. Radiocarbon dating showed he lived around 3300 BC.
Explanations offered
Ötzi is the oldest known natural mummy in Europe, preserved by ice. Scans in 2001 showed he had died from an arrow wound to the shoulder. He's now kept at a museum in Bolzano. Talk of a 'curse', after several people linked to the find died, has no evidence behind it.
- When
- 19 September 1991
- Where
- Tisenjoch, Ötztal Alps, South Tyrol, Italy
- Witnesses
- Two German hikers
- Status
- Confirmed
Famous cases are real, widely reported events. Each file sets out what witnesses said and the explanations that have been offered, without taking a side.