Meet Ötzi The Iceman, The Oldest Preserved Human Being Ever Found

When two German hikers found Ötzi in the Alps in 1991, he was in such pristine condition that they thought he was a mountaineer who had died recently. Turns out, he was a 5,300-year-old murder victim.

On Sept. 19, 1991, two hikers came across a frozen corpse in the Austro-Italian Alps. They had no way of knowing at the time just how historic their find was — as the corpse was later revealed to be the oldest preserved human being ever found, now known as Ötzi the Iceman.

Not only was Ötzi discovered to be over 5,300 years old, but he was also the victim of a murder. It is currently believed that the Neolithic man was killed on the mountain before being naturally mummified by the freezing temperatures. Indeed, the startling freshness of his body even today is nothing short of mind-blowing.

The Accidental Discovery Of Ötzi The Iceman
When German tourists Helmut and Erika Simon came across the frozen corpse of Ötzi the Iceman on the Schnalstal/Val Senales Valley glacier in 1991, the couple initially thought they had just stumbled upon an unfortunate fellow mountaineer who had recently suffered a fatal accident.

Only Ötzi’s head and shoulders were visible over the ice that froze the rest of his body. He was lying mostly on his stomach.

Not realizing how old and delicate their find was, Austrian rescue workers who first responded to the call damaged the corpse as they attempted to dislodge it from the ice. A jackhammer damaged Ötzi’s hip and thigh, his backpack and the bow he was frozen alongside were also both broken.

But over the next three days, a small team of archaeologists extracting the long-frozen body realized their mistake. After bringing the corpse to the office of a medical examiner in Innsbruck, Austria, they determined that it was at least 4,000 years old.