1. Otzi:The Iceman
What does he tell us?
Imagine you were
hiking in the Alps and
you came across
this. What immediate
thoughts/questions
would pop into your
mind?

2. Otzi the Iceman
What does he tell us?

3. The DiscoveryThursday, September 19, 1991 – 1.30
Ötztal Alps (South Tyrol, Italy)
•
2 hikers, Erika and
Helmut Simon,from
Nuremberg in Germany, were walking in the
Ötztal Alps.
They left the footpath, walked past a rocky gully
and noticed something brown on the gully bed.
Was it rubbish???
They had discovered a human corpse.
CHANCE FIND

4. What did they see?
Only the back of the head, the bare shoulders and part of his
back jutted out of the ice and meltwater.
The corpse lay with its chest against a flat rock and its face
obscured.
Beside the corpse the two hikers noticed several pieces of
rolled-up birch bark.
Before leaving the scene, they took a photograph of what
they thought to be the unfortunate victim of a mountaineering
accident a few years back.
• The story of a 20th century archaeological sensation was
about to unfold.

5. The
Recovery
Pneumatic Drill

6. The Day After
Friday, September 20, 1991
Austrian team undertook the first attempt to remove the man
from the ice.
Weather had taken a turn for the worse.
Using a pneumatic drill, police officer Anton Koler and the
mountain refuge keeper Markus Pirpamer tried to free the
corpse.
Constant flow of meltwater, the two men were obliged to work
virtually under water, resulting in damage to the corpse’s
left hip. With the weather worsening by the minute and lacking
the necessary tools, the team were forced to abandon their work.

7. Ice Axe
Ice Pick
Ski
Poles

8. The following days....
Saturday, September 21, 1991
The next day: Problems! No helicopters were available.
Mountaineers Hans Kammerlander and Reinhold Messner
happened to be on the scene. They observed the first
details of the dead man’s clothing and equipment.
Sunday, September 22, 1991
Rescue team leader Alois Pirpamer and Franz
Gurschler prepared the corpse for recovery the following
day. They collected the strewn objects and packed them in
a plastic rubbish bag. The very same day Alois Pirpamer
returned to his hotel in Vent with the sack slung over his
shoulder.

9. Excavating Otzi!
Monday, September 23, 1991
Otzi extracted from the ice. Snow had fallen overnight, the temperature had dropped, and
the corpse was once again frozen solid in ice.
The recovery was carried out under the leadership of Rainer Henn. As no
archaeologist was present, the filmed footage proved to be an important record.
Using ice picks and ski poles, the team managed to free the mummy fully from
the ice. From the meltwater emerged numerous pieces of leather and hide, string, straps
and clumps of hay, which were placed in a pile beside the corpse.
The corpse was packed in a body bag along with the latest finds and flown by helicopter
to the town of Vent in the Austrian Ötz Valley.
In Vent the mummy and the finds were placed in a wooden coffin. At the request of the
public prosecutor, the corpse was taken by hearse to the Institute of Forensic Medicine in
Innsbruck.

10. SCENE OF THE
DISCOVERY
Was discovered in a 40 m-long, 2.5- to 3 m-deep and
5- to 8 m-wide rocky gully surrounded by steep stone
walls at an altitude of 3210 m above sea level.
The bed of the gully is strewn with large boulders.
The mummy lay on a large light-coloured granite
slab at the western end of the rock formation.
This formation protected the find from the enormous
forces of the ice, which slowly built up above it. At the
time the border was drawn in 1922, this area – now
free of ice – was covered by a 20 m-thick layer of
snow.