Ötzi the Iceman: A 5,000-Year-Old True Crime Murder Mystery | Full Documentary |
He was stalked, attacked and left to die alone. Murdered more than 5,000 years ago, Otzi the Iceman is Europe’s oldest known natural mummy. Miraculously preserved in glacial ice, his remarkably intact remains continue to provide scientists, historians, and archeologists with groundbreaking discoveries about a crucial time in human history. But in order to protect him from contamination, this extraordinary body has been locked away, out of reach, in a frozen crypt—until now. NOVA joins renowned artist and paleo-sculptor Gary Staab as he has been granted rare access into the Iceman’s frozen lair. Gary has been charged with creating an exact replica of the mummy, which scientists and the public alike can then study up close and in person. As we see the Iceman reborn from 3D printing, resin, clay and paint, new revelations about Otzi’s life and legacy come to light, including surprising secrets hidden in his genetic code.
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Short filmTranscript
00:00He's the oldest human specimen we have that is so complete.
00:16He's so well preserved.
00:18He continues to generate this body of information.
00:21He may well be the most studied human being in history.
00:27The Iceman.
00:29He was found in a glacier, frozen in time for 5,000 years.
00:35An ancient murder mystery.
00:38What can we learn from him?
00:40What is his story?
00:41We figured he was probably Italian.
00:43Wrong.
00:44Eastern European?
00:45North African?
00:46Wrong, wrong, wrong.
00:47Where is this guy from?
00:50Scientists search for answers hidden in his genetic code.
00:53We're rewriting the history of humankind.
00:57As an artist brings him back to life.
00:59If they believe that it's real, then I've done my job.
01:04Science and art join to share the Iceman and his secrets with the world.
01:11We have to turn this thing from plastic to flesh.
01:16Iceman Reborn, right now on NOVA.
01:44In a custom-built lab, a team of doctors suits up.
01:49Strict precautions are taken.
01:52Because this is a very unusual case.
01:57The patient has been dead for over 5,000 years.
02:06This is Uzi, the Iceman.
02:12One of the oldest and best-preserved intact human bodies ever found.
02:22The story of Uzi's discovery is still one of the most astounding in human history.
02:291991, on a 10,000-foot glacier near the border of Austria and Italy, two hikers come across
02:38the body of a man, face down in the ice.
02:44They have no idea the importance of what they've stumbled upon.
02:48Perhaps it's a mountaineer, or even a lost soldier from World War I.
02:57But as they pull the remains from the ice, capturing the recovery on video, certain clues
03:04point to a different story.
03:07A knife made of stone, a shoe made of grass, a quiver of arrows, leather leggings, a copper
03:19axe.
03:23Carbon dating later reveals that the body and the items found with it have been preserved
03:28in the mountain ice for over 5,000 years.
03:37Uzi becomes not only an international sensation, but also a scientific treasure.
03:45He's the oldest human specimen we have that is so complete, so well-preserved, with all
03:51the scientific disciplines that are intrigued by him, that want answers.
03:57He may well be the most studied human being in history.
04:04Now new technology is yielding more clues, revealing surprising secrets about this mysterious
04:11ancient man and the world he lived in.
04:15From the strange markings that cover his body to the DNA in his bones, researchers are trying
04:25to use his genetic code to uncover his true origins, to track down his relatives, alive
04:33even today, and help solve longstanding mysteries about how people lived at the end of the Stone
04:41Age.
04:42He provides a window into what life looked like 5,000 years ago in Europe.
04:48So it's kind of like finding the Ark of the Covenant.
04:50How important is that?
04:52Yeah, it's pretty important.
04:55The clues begin with Uzi himself.
05:00At the time of his death, he was about 45 years old, 5 foot 2 inches tall, weighing
05:07about 110 pounds.
05:13New research deciphering Uzi's genetic code reveals he had brown eyes, dark hair, and
05:22had both Lyme disease and a predisposition to heart disease.
05:29But that's not what killed him on the mountain.
05:35At first it was thought that the Iceman had frozen to death in a storm and been buried
05:40in the snow.
05:48But a radiologist reviewing his X-rays spotted something strange that had escaped everyone
05:54else's notice, an arrowhead lodged deep in the Iceman's shoulder.
06:02The arrowhead was detected in 2001, and then the question was, did the arrowhead kill him
06:07or not?
06:10CT or CAT scans of the body, revealing Uzi's internal anatomy in amazing detail, provided
06:17more clues.
06:18We could reconstruct then the area where the arrow entered the body and disrupted a major
06:23artery of the left arm.
06:25If you are losing so much blood that maybe after 10, 15 minutes, you're dead.
06:32From this, we knew that he was killed by this arrow shot.
06:38Shot and left to die on the mountain, the mystery was deepening.
06:47Who was Uzi?
06:50What did he do for a living?
06:54Who were his people?
06:57And why was he killed?
07:05The answers will not be easy to find, because Uzi's condition is so delicate.
07:12Uzi has spent years locked in a freezer at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology.
07:19His cell, kept at a chilly 19 degrees, is designed to protect him from potentially destructive
07:26microbes.
07:29No one enters the sterile environment except Uzi's doctors.
07:34The Iceman is kept under sterile condition in this refrigeration cell, and that's why
07:39we have to take care who is entering the cell, because we want to avoid that anybody brings
07:44in any kind of contamination.
07:47Yeah, ready to go.
07:51Today, an exception has been made for an artist named Gary Staub.
07:58Gary has been charged with a difficult mission, to sculpt an exact replica of the Iceman,
08:05a copy that will be accessible to researchers and to the public, who can't get close to
08:11the real thing.
08:12We cannot allow everybody entering the cell who has maybe a certain research question
08:17to inspect the mummy.
08:19We want to make a good copy people can use to see, to get very close, to get data which
08:24cannot be done with the original mummy.
08:27It's always really a risk.
08:28Nail bed and pinky, nine millimeters.
08:31Gary has limited time to take in all the details of this rare and unique human body.
08:37I'm soaking in every single detail I can lay my eyes on.
08:40He must create the most accurate replica possible, Uzi's twin.
08:46Right index, five millimeters.
08:49He evaluates Uzi's skin tone and texture.
08:52The keratin has fallen off the nail beds.
08:55His distorted face.
08:57The cartilage is so, so thin.
08:59His ravaged hip.
09:01Yes, we have a very big defect of soft tissues and bone tissues.
09:06Because of the damage, this will be very difficult to replicate.
09:10In the process of getting every detail just right, Gary will have to learn all he can
09:15about the Iceman and his times.
09:18How he lived, died, and became mummified.
09:23What is his story?
09:24What can we learn from him?
09:25And how can he enrich our understanding of the past?
09:28Okay.
09:29Very good.
09:30Dr. Eduard Egarter-Vigel calls an end to Gary's visit.
09:35Any more thawing and the Iceman could be in danger of bacterial contamination.
09:41Absolutely amazing.
09:42So, that was the fastest 30 minutes of my life.
09:47This very intimate moment with the mummy will be very helpful in the final product.
09:51It'll be so much better because of that.
09:55With Utsi safe in his sterile crypt, Gary will begin to bring his body double to life.
10:04To start, the CT scans that helped determine Utsi's cause of death will provide a detailed
10:11blueprint for the Iceman's twin, thanks to a remarkable technology, 3D printing.
10:21Utsi will literally be printed out in three dimensions.
10:26We use our software to transform the CT images into a 3D model that you can print.
10:34Special software converts the data into a stack of over 2,000 horizontal slices, creating
10:41a blueprint of Utsi's body.
10:45This is then fed into a computer, which controls a gigantic 5-foot by 18-foot machine, known
10:52as the Mammoth.
10:54They have the ability to create the entire print in one piece, which is very rare.
11:01In this enormous vat, 350 gallons of liquid resin, the consistency of warm honey, will
11:08be transformed into a life-size plastic model of the Iceman.
11:16The computer guides lasers around a thin layer of liquid resin.
11:21We use a laser to trace out cross-sections of Utsi, and under UV light, the polymer starts
11:27to harden.
11:30Once it solidifies, just a few seconds, a very thin layer is positioned on top of it.
11:36The laser hardens it out again, and this way the model is built layer by layer.
11:42For nearly three days, the lasers continue their work, little by little, until every
11:48small bump and hollow on the surface of the Iceman's body is present and accounted for.
11:55So this is very exciting.
11:57We're using the newest technologies to three-dimensionally print the oldest wet mummy ever found.
12:05Finally, it's time to reveal the 3-D print.
12:13Oh my gosh, this is fantastic.
12:17Transformed from liquid to solid.
12:19The face details are beautiful.
12:22That is absolutely fantastic.
12:26Utsi's body has been reconstructed as one extremely detailed hollow piece of plastic.
12:33Beautifully translucent, but it still captures all the forms and the shapes.
12:38Lovely.
12:42As the model emerges, the Iceman is reborn.
12:48Utsi coming out of this resin was kind of overwhelming, because slowly his face was
12:52revealed, his feet were revealed, his rib cage.
12:56It was super exciting to know that that three-dimensional print was at such a high resolution.
13:03You really have something to work with.
13:07It is on this plastic Utsi that Gary will sculpt the lifelike version.
13:14It's a treat to see it in one color, because there's nothing distracting your eye.
13:19I'm also looking at anatomical features that correspond to the structures that I saw in the freezer.
13:25While Gary reviews Utsi's plastic form, scientists continue to hunt down clues about the flesh
13:33and blood manned.
13:36For Albert Zink, who oversees research on the mummy, Utsi's CT scans are especially
13:42valuable.
13:44Because a look at Utsi's muscles and joints can tell us a lot about his life and lifestyle.
13:51Perhaps even how he made a living.
13:54The two main ways of life 5,300 years ago were farming and hunting and gathering.
14:01We can reconstruct the muscles, the muscle structure, how the muscles are attached and
14:05the bones.
14:06We just could distract all these from the CT scans.
14:10Zink notices Utsi did not show signs of strain in his upper body muscles and joints.
14:17That might rule out farming.
14:20In his upper part, in his shoulders, in the arms and hands, there's almost nothing.
14:24And for a man which was about 40 to 50 years old in this time period, we would expect some
14:29changes if he had worked with his hands.
14:32The scans do indicate severe damage in the muscles and joints of his legs and back, which
14:40suggests he was a constant traveler.
14:45Also, the mummy's knee and hip joints are missing a lot of their cartilage, a painful
14:52condition called arthrosis, a kind of arthritis caused by wear and tear.
14:58The physical effects of the Iceman were that he had lower back problems.
15:03The same is true for the knee.
15:04We know he had some arthrosis of the knee joints and this caused pain from time to time.
15:11Utsi died in the mountains.
15:14And he likely spent much of his life there, too.
15:18We know from his physical appearance that he was walking a lot, that he maybe was carrying
15:22some heavy things.
15:23So maybe he was trading something.
15:25It could be that he was really traveling a lot.
15:28But we cannot really say what was his role in society.
15:33Searching for even more evidence about this enigmatic man, scientists perform a kind of
15:40autopsy on Utsi.
15:43They remove specimens from inside his most culturally sensitive organ, his stomach.
15:51And they are able to extract Utsi's last meal, eaten only hours before his death.
16:00Some of the contents point to Utsi being a hunter.
16:03So much material from the stomach now.
16:06He had wild Ibex meat in his stomach.
16:08So he was clearly hunting for part of his sustenance.
16:12He also had eikorn wheat.
16:14Eikorn wheat has to come from farming.
16:17It's this classical kind of interesting mystery.
16:21Utsi's sending us mixed messages about how he's living his life.
16:28In addition to food, researchers also found different kinds of pollen in the Iceman's stomach.
16:35This revealed that Utsi had been traveling up and down the mountain within the last 48 hours of his life.
16:43Utsi seems to have been a man on the move, whose adventures came to a violent end.
16:55More than 5,000 years later, Utsi's twin is on a journey of its own.
17:02Across the Atlantic Ocean, all the way to Kearney, Missouri, in the American heartland.
17:09Here, Gary Staub brings ancient fossils back to life.
17:15He is a master model maker.
17:20Over the years, he has been commissioned to build replicas of dozens of extinct creatures for museums around the world.
17:30He has fashioned prehistoric fish, sculpted life-size dinosaurs, and crafted giant crocodiles.
17:38I've spent entirely way too much time on the inside of large animals.
17:43From the miniature to the monstrous, whether it swims, crawls, or flies, Gary's job is to resurrect the long dead.
17:53So the fascinating fact is that 99% of all life that has ever existed on Earth is extinct.
18:00So I follow floods, I follow volcanic eruptions, mass death events.
18:05I'm a bit of an ambulance chaser, but I'm just a little bit late.
18:10Maybe a few thousand years late.
18:13In some cases, 50 or 60 million years late.
18:17Gary's investigations, all to better understand his subjects and the worlds they lived in, have taken him around the globe.
18:26From exotic excavation sites to ancient fossil fields.
18:31Most of the time, my job is to sculpt animals for museums, and we only have their bones, we only have fossils.
18:38So I have to take something that no one is exactly sure what it looked like and try and breathe life into it.
18:45This is a neat situation.
18:47We know exactly what Iceman looks like, so my job is to replicate him exactly as he looks right now.
18:54What's in here?
18:56Now, Gary faces one of the biggest challenges of his career.
19:02Creating the exact replica of Utsi, the Iceman.
19:06All right, it's like Neolithic Christmas.
19:10The plastic model generated by the 3D printer has just arrived in his studio.
19:16It was an amazing feeling to finally lift him out of the crate and take him onto the table.
19:21By the time we're finished, we'll have worked thousands of hours.
19:253D printing technology has provided the artist with a good head start.
19:30A model with physical dimensions exact to the millimeter.
19:35It's a perfect match to the shape of the Iceman.
19:38But the surface of the model is not detailed enough to create a believable replica.
19:44So we've got a lot of work ahead of us.
19:48Gary and his team will need to sculpt Utsi the old-fashioned way.
19:53All by hand.
19:56There's not one centimeter of this thing that isn't complicated.
20:00It is going to be very hard.
20:04It will be a four-part process.
20:06Sculpting, molding, painting, and crafting minute surface details will take Gary and his team months to complete.
20:17The challenges are many.
20:18We have not only the elements of the skin texture.
20:22We have the detail of the face.
20:24We have the detail of the hands.
20:26And we have to figure out how to replicate the hips.
20:28Because the hip is going to be very challenging to do.
20:33You guys start on this end and work your way up.
20:35And I'll start on the head and then I'll be somewhere in the middle, I hope.
20:38The first step, darken the mummy's body to better reveal the exact contours of the 3D printer.
20:45We can't actually read the surface when it's translucent.
20:48So we take a very dark and penetrating stain and we paint it over the top of the three-dimensional print.
20:54It allows us to see the surface in a much better way.
20:58So we can read those shapes and then actually make judgments on how we're going to sculpt the surface based on what we see.
21:06There are thousands of considerations.
21:08Not hundreds.
21:09Thousands of considerations that have to be made.
21:12Not hundreds.
21:13Thousands of considerations that have to be taken into account while you're doing this.
21:18Next, Gary replicates Utsi's skin with especially malleable modeling clay.
21:25As the thin clay bonds to the resin, Gary and his team sculpt every detail of the mummy's surface texture, inch by inch.
21:36Getting Utsi's skin just right is one of the main challenges for Gary and his crew.
21:43We have to turn this thing from plastic to flesh.
21:49Human skin is actually an organ, the largest we have.
21:54On average, it takes about 20 square feet of skin to cover a human body.
22:00It will take hundreds of hours to replicate Utsi's complex, mummified surface.
22:08Pick out some of these that might work well and then run some samples.
22:12Gary relies on texture pads to press patterns into Utsi's clay skin.
22:18I have hundreds of textures in a box.
22:20I pull them out to see which ones might match.
22:22These flexible rubber patches create varied imprints on the wet clay.
22:28Human skin has three layers.
22:31The epidermis, or outer layer, acts as a waterproof wrapping and a guard against infection.
22:38It also determines our skin color.
22:41The next layer, the dermis, is made up of tough connective tissue, along with nerve endings, hair follicles, and sweat glands.
22:51Finally, the deep hypodermis consists of subcutaneous fat and more connective tissue.
22:58Gary and his team are sculpting the second layer of Utsi's skin.
23:02The dermis, most of the outer layer, was lost to the mountain.
23:09If you look at the skin of this mummy, you have to realize that this body has been lying in ice for years.
23:18The ice isn't always stable, so in summer the ice melts into water.
23:24If it's in water for too long, the upper layer of the skin, the epidermis, separates, and you lose it.
23:32The layers underneath, the dermis and the subcutaneous layer, remain preserved.
23:39Also a lot of hair, fingernails, and toenails have been lost.
23:43Enough of the ice man's skin, along with soft tissue and muscle, has been preserved to make Utsi a true mummy.
23:53For Gary, Utsi is not the first mummy he has replicated, but certainly one of the most unique.
24:01Mummies can be created naturally or artificially.
24:06Artificial mummies, like those from ancient Egypt, were made by intentionally blocking the decaying process.
24:14The important thing during mummification is that it happens immediately.
24:18So the natural process is the degradation, the decomposition of a body, so it has to be stopped immediately.
24:25This was the case for one of the most famous mummies of all, the Egyptian pharaoh, King Tutankhamen.
24:32He was embalmed and then coated in a black, resin-like liquid that encased and preserved his skin.
24:41But in natural mummies, like Utsi, or those discovered on mountaintops in the Andes, or bog bodies found buried in peat, the environment alone preserves the body.
24:56The ice man is a natural mummy. He was naturally captured in the ice.
25:02And he's also a humid mummy, so he still contains some water in his tissue that makes him also so difficult to preserve.
25:10It is luck that Utsi was preserved at all.
25:14He was nearly lost forever.
25:17Fortunately, his body lay in a small trench, protected by large rocks on two sides.
25:24This trench eventually filled in with ten feet of snow and ice, preventing the ice man from being swept into the deadly frozen current that flowed around him.
25:36This makes him also quite unique. He's one of the few ice mummies that exists at all, and he's the only natural ice mummy that exists in the world.
25:45And he's the only natural ice mummy we have in the Alpine region.
25:50The ice preserved Utsi, but the great weight of the glacier eventually flattened his body, creating the ultra-lean frame that Gary is now duplicating.
26:05After weeks of work, the replica is covered in a layer of white clay that matches the texture of Utsi's body.
26:15But in order for Gary to finish the face, he must remove Utsi's head.
26:21It's much easier to sculpt away from the body, so you have to bring it to where you can focus, get exactly in a zone where physically you can work on it for that length of time and not get ultra-fatigued.
26:32Utsi's face presents a particular challenge.
26:36This will be the thing that everyone looks at. They'll engage it in the face, in the eyes, and that's where they will spend most of their time.
26:42This is where he will become a person to them.
26:46He has a really wild-looking face. It's a bit grotesque in some ways.
26:52His lip is actually pushed up here because he was laying face down on a rock, and that pressure on his face and over his nose.
26:59The nose is so difficult to tease out the details of what's actually happening there.
27:03You know, what am I actually seeing? What's doing what so that it can be correct?
27:07It's entirely possible I'll know his face better than his mother did.
27:16After months of sculpting, molding, and crafting the exact details of the Iceman, Gary has reached the most visible stage in his process.
27:30I'm at a very exciting point.
27:33The paint.
27:34Finally, I can actually put color on.
27:39Painting is a very fun part of this process, and it's very fun to see this come to life through color.
27:45From the rims of his eyes to the tips of his toes, Gary must match every inch of Utsi's skin to the original.
27:57Including the mummy's mysterious markings.
28:04Many sets of parallel lines.
28:09And two crosses.
28:12These are Utsi's tattoos.
28:17The Iceman is the oldest tattooed mummy ever discovered.
28:22It's complicated because there's so many.
28:24Yes, we discovered a lot of tattoos.
28:27Researcher Marco Sammedelli has been one of Utsi's caretakers for nearly 20 years.
28:32How did you catalog each one of these?
28:35Recently, Marco set out to inventory every tattoo on Utsi's skin.
28:41We discovered exactly 61 tattoos.
28:44That's a lot of ink.
28:49It is difficult to see the tattoos on a 5,000-year-old mummy.
28:56Marco's research revealed something no one had ever seen before.
29:02Thanks to a unique camera sensitive to invisible light.
29:08Multispectral imaging is a technique used to see what the eye can't see.
29:14It's with this technique we discovered every single detail, even under the surface of the mummy's skin.
29:22The exact number and location of all the tattoos was a mystery.
29:27Until now.
29:29We discovered a tattoo that had never been seen before.
29:34Four parallel lines on the right side of his chest.
29:39We were able to see all his tattoos and obtain a complete mapping.
29:4561 tattoos arranged in 19 groups across his body.
29:51Archaeologist Aaron Dieter Wolf studies the use of tattoos in ancient cultures.
29:57Tattooing has been practiced throughout a huge portion of human history going back at least 16 or 18,000 years before present.
30:06During that time period people have been tattooed for all sorts of different reasons depending on their culture and the region in which they lived.
30:13Aaron has come to Gary's studio to demonstrate how and why he believes Utsi's tattoos may have been made.
30:21We're going to take a piece of pig skin, which is a proxy for human skin,
30:27and we're going to use these reproduction tools to tattoo that skin in the same patterns that are on Utsi's body.
30:35Aaron thinks Utsi's tattoos were most likely created with a technique that was widespread in the ancient world.
30:42By using a sharp needle, probably made from bone, to puncture the skin and push ink made from charcoal into the tiny shallow wounds.
30:53What you want to do is just dip the tip of the tool and then you're just going to go in very, very shallowly.
31:02Microscopic and chemical analysis reveals that the dark lines are made primarily of carbon, along with bits of silica.
31:11A composition most likely collected around the edge of a campfire.
31:15So what kind of depth?
31:16Less than a millimeter.
31:17Less than a millimeter.
31:18You can feel the skin give underneath the needle there.
31:20Just a little tiny pop.
31:21That's moving through that epidermis, yep.
31:24I thought it would be a little bit easier, but it takes hundreds and hundreds of punctures to actually get a solid line.
31:32I'm using the exact same stabbing technique with a brush on the model.
31:38Looking at how difficult it was to create those tattoos on pigskin, imagine the pain that Otzi had to go through when he had his tattoos made.
31:47I wouldn't get a tattoo that way.
31:50So why would Otzi endure this painful process, not just once, but dozens of times?
31:58We generally agree that Otzi's tattoos don't seem on the whole to be decorative or symbolic.
32:06For Aaron and other experts, a key clue to understanding the purpose of the tattoos could be where they've been placed.
32:15A number of Otzi's tattoos seem to correspond to areas where he suffered from ailments or injuries.
32:23He had arthritis in his lower back, and there are tattoos on his lower lumbar area.
32:29He had arthritis in his right knee, there are tattoos on the back of his right knee.
32:32He had arthritis in his ankles, there are a number of tattoos around both his right and left ankles.
32:40Most recently, this new set of tattoos is located on his lower right abdomen.
32:46Among the many ailments that he suffered from was gallstones and whipworms in his colon,
32:51and this is a place that is very close to those areas and could potentially have been used to treat the pains he was experiencing.
32:59Tattooing the skin to alleviate pain has been the practice of many cultures.
33:05There are therapeutic tattoo traditions that have been documented all across the world,
33:10in India, in Southeast Asia, in North America, in the American Arctic.
33:16Otzi's tattoos are the earliest direct evidence of this ancient tradition.
33:22But the tattoos may not have been the only medicinal treatment Otzi relied on.
33:29In the woods of upstate New York, archaeologist Patrick Hunt is tracking down wild mushrooms.
33:37With the help of David Work, an expert in fungi, they're hunting for two varieties,
33:45the same ones that Otzi carried with him 5,300 years ago.
33:51This is very much like the forests that Otzi would have known in the Tyrol,
33:57where you've got mixed deciduous forests.
34:00Wow, that's a beautiful example.
34:02Could probably roll this over.
34:05Maybe not.
34:07If you're carrying two different mushrooms, you must have a pretty good idea they address different functions.
34:14One mushroom, known as tinder fungus, is often used to start fires.
34:20When dried, it ignites easily and burns for a long time.
34:26The other kind of fungus, which Otzi carried on leather straps, is called birch polypore.
34:32I'm going to harvest this one.
34:34Most believe Otzi was carrying this particular mushroom for another reason.
34:39Its antiseptic power.
34:42You can also take this mushroom, peel off the spore layers,
34:46and you can put that directly on a wound.
34:51It's antibacterial, it's antiviral.
34:54Here I have a cut there, I'll put that there.
34:57And you could actually tie it around with a piece of grass.
35:03And band-aid.
35:05You don't need bacterial agents because it's got it in the mushroom.
35:08It's already there.
35:10Pretty cool.
35:12In addition to the topical treatment, Otzi may have ingested the mushroom as a kind of Stone Age painkiller.
35:20The peculiar thing is, it has the exact properties that act as remedies to what Otzi had wrong with him.
35:28It's been used in modern periods for some of these same functions.
35:34But Otzi's the oldest case on record for anybody knowing this.
35:40We thought that this was a relatively modern discovery.
35:45Obviously, it's been around for a long time.
35:53As Otzi continues to challenge scientists and historians to revise their picture of the past,
36:00Gary Staub is facing his own challenge in the reconstruction of the mummy's body.
36:07Gary knew it would be a problem, ever since his day in the freezer.
36:12The Iceman's damaged hip.
36:15Perhaps mauled by an animal scavenger after Otzi's death.
36:20It's clear that the animals go to this part of the body.
36:25Scavenging.
36:26Because it's a big attraction for the animals.
36:29The hip is very, very complicated.
36:32In fact, it's almost as complicated as making the entire mummy on its own.
36:36While Gary's studio team makes hundreds of simulated tendons from natural fibers that are frayed and dipped in paraffin,
36:44Gary builds Otzi's ravaged backside.
36:48Because included in the complexity of this, there's dried muscle overlaid by tendons.
36:54Then you have frayed tendons up against bone.
36:57The bone itself, the cancellous bone or the bone marrow inside of the bone that's fractured and torn apart.
37:02And then you have the soft tissues that overlay the bone on this side.
37:06You've got lower bowel intestine that's exposed and broken with bowel stomach contents inside of it.
37:15And then you have fat deposition in here.
37:18So just this section alone has that many different finishes that have to be replicated.
37:24So this is by far the most complicated project I've ever worked on.
37:28It will take weeks to sculpt the Iceman's injured hip.
37:33Meanwhile, scientists continue to search for Otzi's true identity.
37:39Investigating perhaps the most revealing evidence available, Iceman's genetic code.
37:46Genetics is giving us insights that we cannot get through any other means.
37:51The genetic blueprint of every living thing is written in DNA.
37:56It's made of four chemicals, abbreviated as A, C, G and T.
38:04These four letters in a twisting double helix are arranged into 23 pairs of chromosomes within each cell.
38:13This is our biological code containing all the information to build and run our bodies.
38:21Otzi was one of the first ancient Europeans to have his entire code, or genome, analyzed.
38:29It provided detailed clues to his appearance and health.
38:34If you look at a particular gene on chromosome 15, it's the gene that most likely determines eye color.
38:41If you see a pair of G's at this position, that likely means that the person has blue eyes.
38:46Whereas in the case of Otzi, we see an A from both parents, and so that likely means that he had dark colored eyes.
38:53On another chromosome, number 12, two T's indicate that his hair was also dark.
39:02Other chromosomes reveal new details.
39:06Otzi had blood type O.
39:09He even had a predisposition for arteriosclerosis, heart disease.
39:14Often assumed to be associated with our modern lifestyle.
39:19The team also found DNA fragments from the microbe that causes Lyme disease.
39:26Making Otzi the earliest known case.
39:32But what about his origins?
39:36Who were Otzi's ancestors?
39:38The very cool thing about DNA is that changes in DNA literally make us who we are.
39:44The material that we inherit from our mom and our dad links us to all of our ancestors.
39:52And by comparing DNA across individuals and populations, we can get a very rich picture of our ancestry.
40:00Who are we related to? Where did they come from?
40:03Finding answers is especially important because Otzi dates to around the time when prehistoric Europe was undergoing major changes.
40:13As the ancient hunter-gatherer lifestyle was gradually displaced by farming.
40:20Otzi comes from an incredibly important period in European history where we go from hunter-gatherers living in Europe
40:27to the widespread adoption of farming.
40:32Because it's a transitional time period in which Otzi lives, there are huge life ways that converge.
40:40Whether people are hunter-gatherers or whether they're early farmers.
40:45He's in transition. His culture's in transition.
40:4945,000 years ago, modern humans first began arriving in Europe.
40:56They were hunter-gatherers, foraging plants and hunting wild game.
41:04Then, about 7,000 years ago, everything began to change.
41:10People in Europe began to cultivate crops for food.
41:14And by about 5,000 years ago, the hunter-gatherer culture had almost completely disappeared from the continent.
41:22It is one of the most revolutionary transformations in human history.
41:33Where does Otzi fit into this changing landscape?
41:38Did he come from a great family?
41:41Did he come from a group of ancient hunter-gatherers who still lived in pockets throughout Europe?
41:49Or were his people farmers, living a more settled life in the foothills of the Alps?
41:55Scientists turn to Otzi's prehistoric artifacts for more insight.
42:01When you excavate or find someone who died 5,000 years ago,
42:08usually all you have left are the bones.
42:13What is so fantastic about Otzi is that because he was found in a glacier,
42:20because he was frozen in time for 5,000 plus years,
42:26everything survives. His clothes, his tools.
42:32Among the items recovered from the glacier were a fur hat, patchwork leggings made of leather,
42:40deerskin shoes stuffed with hay, a six-foot longbow,
42:47a quiver that held over a dozen arrows.
42:51If you want an arrow shaft, you want the woods that he chose, Cornell and Viburnum.
42:55They grow very straight, they're easily harvested, they're fairly prolific.
43:00His expertly made weapons seem well suited for a man who hunted for his meals.
43:07But other objects paint a different picture.
43:11Otzi's finely crafted copper axe, one of the oldest metal tools ever found in Europe,
43:18points to a more advanced society, one based on farming.
43:24Could the Iceman's DNA help solve the mystery
43:29and determine whether Otzi's people were hunter-gatherers or farmers?
43:35To find out, researchers focus on mutations in the DNA,
43:40random mistakes that can occur when the billions of chemicals that make up our genetic code,
43:46all those A's, T's, G's and C's, get copied.
43:50The human genome is three billion base pairs long.
43:54Every once in a while, you get a mutation,
43:57and that mutation sometimes ends up spreading.
44:02These mutations help create specific patterns of genetic variation in our DNA,
44:08inherited from our parents.
44:11The closer two people are related, the more of these patterns they'll have in common.
44:16So whose DNA does Otzi match best?
44:20The hunter-gatherers or the farmers?
44:24The only way to get at that was to have other ancient samples
44:29from known farmers and known hunter-gatherers
44:33from across Europe, across different points in time.
44:37They found the sample DNA in the bones of dozens of ancient people
44:41excavated from archaeological sites all over Europe.
44:45Some samples go back 45,000 years, when hunting was the only way of life.
44:52Other samples were from 7,000-year-old farming sites.
44:57And the result?
44:59Otzi's DNA is a close match to that of ancient farmers,
45:04not hunter-gatherers.
45:07It became pretty clear that all of the individuals
45:11that we had labeled archaeologically as farmers
45:15were closest to Otzi.
45:18Otzi's DNA reveals that he was descended from farmers
45:23who were in Europe nearly 2,000 years before he was born.
45:29What's more, Otzi's DNA is the only evidence
45:33What's more, the same DNA patterns show up in even older bones
45:38found in some of the earliest known farming sites in the world,
45:43in what is today Turkey.
45:46This suggests that farmers migrated to Europe from Turkey,
45:51filling much of the continent.
45:54Eventually, they pushed aside most of the hunter-gatherers
45:58and their DNA.
46:00So where is Otzi's DNA now?
46:04Could he have distant relatives alive even today?
46:09Comparing his genome to modern DNA samples from all over Europe
46:15would provide the answer.
46:18Who Otzi really was genetically surprised us.
46:23When we started analyzing Otzi,
46:26we figured, ah, he was probably Italian.
46:30Wrong. He didn't cluster with the Italians.
46:34Maybe he's Austrian.
46:37Wrong. He didn't cluster with the Austrians.
46:40Eastern European? Wrong.
46:43North African? Wrong, wrong, wrong.
46:46So where's this guy from?
46:49And it turned out, much to our surprise,
46:52that his closest living relatives
46:54were on the island of Sardinia.
46:58Totally unexpected.
47:01Does this mean that Otzi was Sardinian?
47:04Not necessarily.
47:07Most likely, 5,300 years ago, when the Iceman was born,
47:11most people in Europe, including Sardinians,
47:15carried similar patterns in their DNA
47:18from the early farmer immigrants.
47:21But over the last 5,000 years,
47:24Europe has seen wave after wave of new immigrants,
47:28adding new patterns of DNA to the mix.
47:31Except on the isolated island of Sardinia.
47:35There, ever since the early farmers arrived,
47:39the inhabitants and their DNA pattern
47:42have stayed relatively stable.
47:45This wave of farmers that swept through Europe
47:49made it to Sardinia and stayed there.
47:51It's a genetic snapshot of what
47:54that wave of immigration looked like.
47:57This makes today's Sardinians
48:00Otzi's closest living relatives.
48:06Over the past five months,
48:09here at Gary's studio in Missouri,
48:12the Iceman has undergone a complicated transformation.
48:16If they look at this and they believe that it's real,
48:18then I've done my job and we want only Otzi
48:21to be the final product. It's just about Otzi.
48:26Before the model is finished,
48:29its accuracy will be put to the ultimate test.
48:32When Albert Zink, who oversees
48:35the Institute for Mummies and the Iceman in Italy,
48:38comes to examine Gary's work.
48:41I'm absolutely petrified he's here to see this
48:44because he is the person who's the most familiar with the mummy.
48:55My goal is to have him for one second be fooled
48:59that maybe he's actually looking at Otzi.
49:01He's actually looking at Otzi.
49:13I have to tell you something, it's really good.
49:16It's really good work. I'm really very impressed.
49:20It's really, really amazing.
49:23Some moments I felt that the mummy's outside of his freezer,
49:27it's too dangerous, but then I realized it's the replica.
49:31You manage to give him this kind of expression
49:34that you still can feel somehow that this was a human being,
49:37somebody who lived very long ago.
49:40It's really a masterpiece.
49:43This is the first time I've ever seen a human being
49:46in the form of a mummy.
49:49It's amazing.
49:51It's amazing.
49:53It's amazing.
49:55It's amazing.
49:57It's amazing.
49:58It's really a masterpiece.
50:01This is great for scholars because with this replica
50:04you can really explore in much more detail.
50:07In combination with all the other data we have,
50:10I think this will bring us also a step forward in our research.
50:16With Albert Zink's approval,
50:19the time has come for Gary to share the replica with the world.
50:24Wow!
50:25He's brought Uzi to New York's Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory,
50:29one of the world's foremost genetic research institutes.
50:34For Gary, it's like dropping a child off at the first day of school.
50:39I'm a little bit nervous.
50:41It's been a really long road,
50:43and it's a lot of work culminating with this day.
50:48For many years, the director of Cold Spring Harbor
50:51was James Watson, co-discoverer of DNA's double helix.
50:57It's remarkable.
50:59It was very exciting to get DNA from 5,000 years ago.
51:05Uzi could never have known that how he lived and died
51:10would intrigue and inspire future generations.
51:14Looks like he's looking at you.
51:16Like these students, some of whom have been studying him for years.
51:21Otzi is a great example of how DNA can help us learn about the past.
51:26He's awesome. Coolest dead guy in the world.
51:30What's incredible about the Uzi story
51:33is that as technology's gotten better and better,
51:36it's the gift that keeps on giving.
51:38We can keep going back to this sample,
51:41and it yields new mysteries and new insights
51:44into both human history and into Uzi himself.
51:51Uzi was a man on the move
51:54until an arrow ended his journey through life.
51:58But his death on the mountain
52:01would ultimately take him much farther than he could ever have imagined
52:06and make him one of the most famous and fascinating humans
52:12who ever walked the Earth.
52:21NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology
52:51NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology
53:21NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology