A Neolithic man who died a violent death high in the Ötztal Alps has been thawed for the first time in 5,300 years, and his autopsy is revealing new clues as to how he lived and died. The mummified body of the man, nicknamed Ötzi, was first discovered partially embedded in a glacier in September of 1991 by two German hikers, and due to the initial assumption that he was a modern corpse, was hastily extracted from the ice by Austrian authorities and taken to a morgue in Innsbruck. Only then did scientists learn Ötzi’s true age and historical significance as the oldest natural European mummy from the Copper Age.
