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I hit like before I watched it, all these videos are so, so good. This one I have enjoyed and is the most anticipated of all so far. Great job on it! 😁👍👊😎
Otzi is a gift to us through the ages. Let's also remember the man, someone's son, brother, probably father. When he didn't come back, he was missed, a family probably went hungry.🌷
I'm just so curious what happened to him. Was it just a random act of violence/ theft? It seems he had some valuable stuff on him that a thief would want to keep. It's so brutal to understand by modern standards, but perhaps he WAS sacrificed because he was 'getting too old' Maybe this was some sort of common ritual for ancient people: Honored man is getting too old. He's 'sent on a final journey'. He's followed by a young hunter - the hunter has a 'sacred' but reluctant purpose to deliver a 'quick death' ...Or maybe this precious gift of a man was just randomly slaughtered by a piece of shit. This man's importance to humanity is huge. I hope that in some realm, he can see that.
I prefer a different scenario. Otzi was a bachelor from another village far away. He'd shown up several times bringing game and trade articles, but this time he was down on his luck, arrows needed points and Fletching, and no trade Goods. He was rebuked. So he grabbed a young girl and tried to abscond with her. He was chased by her relatives and friends, took an arrow in the back, but was able to hole up bbn in a defensive position. The girl got away, but he died of exposure in a spot that covered him with ice and preserved his body.
The evidence suggest that he was most likely a outcast or criminal that was on the run and was caught and shot as is the lack of interest of claiming any of his gear and was mostly likely not a minor offense. He was found , that took who know how many days and then killed.
If Ötzi was murdered, then it seems to me, people that killed him really seriously wanted him dead. All that ascending, decending indicates a pursuit, and it takes dedication, great will and hatred to chase someone like that in such harsh mountanous environment. Was it a blood feud? Revenge? Eye for an eye? If only dead man could speak.
the main hypothesis is that they did a Hunger Games style hunt of him and the killer became the new Chieftain. They found like 8 peoples blood on his knife and arrows so he went down fighting
Or rival clans, for all we know this could be a sense of an ambush with one clan fighting anther in a primitive war. Maybe Otzi was sent to scout out the enemy camp or make peace which explains why he was in the mountains in the first place he may of had to go up there to reach them quickly
@@timway6839 that would make a lot of sense. i think forensic evidence said he killed his killer and hiked off the wound into the mountain pass. but surely they would have wanted to get him
I think it's poetic that, in a sense, his journey continued long after his death. Ultimately he journeyed into a future that could learn much about his life and times from his remains. In a macabre way, I think that's sort of beautiful.
Commenting again now that I've finished the whole video. I feel a deep sense of gratitude for his life and the look into it his near-miraculous preservation gifted us. I remember learning about him in middle school "social studies" class lol, I thought he was interesting back then... but this video was a whole new level of detail, and it's cool to see how much we've learned since then!!
5:52 There's a practical reason for the ends of his cape being unwoven. Like any fringed garment, the loose ends help to shed water by breaking up the surface tension.
I'm sorry to tell you but you're wrong the reason you have Fringe just like the backwoods Tennessee boys the colonial days was it shook the bugs off of you going through the brush ticks will kill you
I've seen those same capes used by farmers in Japan as raincoats. They look almost exactly the same. Of course they are not so much in use these days, but they are still being used by a few old farmers here and there.
The Copper Age is another one of those things we didn't learn about in school and didn't read about in popular science magazines, and yet it was such an important, formative period at least for Europe. Glad you've stepped up to the task of educating people!
@@DanDavisHistory absolutely. Even today people will collect, sell and recycle scrap metal. And it could only have been more valuable to recycle it back in those days. It's curious to think that some miniscule part of my ancestors old copper axe can be in the electronics of the computer I'm writing this on, or the transmission lines for the power I'm charging it with.
I suspect the Copper Age gets bubrushed over because it was, at least when I was a kid, perceived of as being very short with copper being perceived in the modern day as a soft metal useless for anything by ornaments in comparison to bronze, at least in the stuff I read early on. As Dan mentions in the video, too, Copper was valuable enough to just recast rather than discard, meaning there might be a thousand or more years of copper history we don't know anything about because of recycling. So remember, kids: don't recycle! You're just making future archeologists' job harder!
@@azteccroatia1496 we didn't cover it in school here in the UK but since my parents house was virtually made of books I didn't rely on school for my learning thankfully.
I desperately want to sit at a campfire and have a conversation with him. He wasn't an animal, he was a man who probably had kids or a woman missing him. RIP Otzi.
He was my great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great Grandfather We still have alot of family stories passed down from him I should be able to answer any questions you have it will all most be like chatting to him
WRT him looking "older", that's from a life lived outdoors. Go to any rural area especially a fishing community and try to guess the men's ages. UV light ages you, and you get a double dose when you're in a boat on the water. We work indoors, we have moisturizers and exfoliants and god knows what. And we worship "a youthful look". We look young for our age these days. He just worked outdoors a lot, high up in the mountains. Lots of UV exposure.
@@SeverusFelix Those valley people can only afford a thatched hut. They aren't frugal with their resources. You can't afford a proper roundhouse if you spend all your flint on avacado toast. Back in my day, we saved everything. The young people today, don't value anything. My father would have killed me if I took a precious copper axe up in mountains like that. Tsktsktsk. The young people are going to the dogs.
Ötzi is probably the most fascinating arheological discovery in our time. We are so fortunate that a time capsule like his remains appeared when science was able to make so much out of it. Regarding his axe remaining by the corpse, it may be because he and his killer were part of the same community. The killer removed his own arrow, but left Ötzi's valuable posessions. If the killer had stolen anything, people in their community could recognize the items as belonging to Ötzi, and if the body was found, someone may recognize the arrow. Sometimes the simplest explaination is the right one. Anytime archeologists use the methaphysical argument it sounds like they are out of ideas, although metsphysics no doubt played a large role in prehistoric times.
Maybe they had better gear and they did steal something else from him. There's no way to know. You'd think they'd take the copper head at least though... Or maybe there was a stigma surrounding stealing but not killing? Like an honor killing but you can't take the possessions?
I’ve a lot of media about this guy but this is the most detailed documentary I’ve ever seen about him. Several facts and alternative reconstructions I hadn’t seen before
Right? I'm a pretty big archaeology & anthropology nerd in general, but I've followed the discoveries around Ötzi since he was first found back in the 90s - and I was just thinking the same thing
Perhaps Otzi was murdered by a member of his own tribe over some local dispute. His valuable axe was left behind on the mountain because possessing it would have identified the killer or started a blood feud.
possible. we'll never know definitely. what we can do is assumption based on facts we know, like artifacts, geofacts, biofacts as well as general human behaviour.
Yes, in my mind the fact that his possessions were left untouched is quite an important clue. In this time period it was quite rare to waste resources and really the only thing that makes sense is what you suggest, that the killer would have been identified if he returned to his village with Otzi's tools and possessions. Also could be why the killer took the time to retrieve the fatal arrow shaft as perhaps it had some identifiable properties as well. Any roving band of bandits, warring tribe or random stranger would have certainly pilfered bounty or taken 'trophies.' Doesn't rule out an accidental killing or hunting accident as perhaps the person could have been ashamed and returned with a story of Otzi simply going missing.
It made me laugh when you pointed out that the ice man was not vegan or vegetarian. Only people who have a overabundance of food can afford to choose what they eat. Being vegan or vegetarian is a modern life choice that would be quickly forgotten if our current supply chain broke down. Survivers are omnivores.
Yes I think calling him vegan was more the media reporting than the researchers but they didn't find any suggestion of animal proteins and fats in his hair.
@@magar5862 Entirely modern, actually. Pythagoras was a city dweller, his food was bought in markets, and his time was spent in the study of mathematics. He led a very modern lifestyle in comparison to the people of the Chalcolithic.
I am very impressed by the respect you have for ancient cultures and beliefs - you never denigrate how societies from back then considered things, such as smithing/metalworking and the perceived metaphysics surrounding it. You speak about it as if it's a perfectly legitimate worldview and I appreciate that greatly; I feel it communicates a tremendous, and proper, amount of respect to those that came before us. It respects the logic they had, and showcases how sensible the way they interacted with their world was. Cheers, Mr. Davis. Phenomenal work specifically relating to the topic, too.
Years ago I visited Ötzi in his museum and his gras-cape really cought my eye (~ 6:00), because in Japan I bought a book with early photographs of japanese people and one of them portaited a man wearing a similar cape. It seems that around the world people came to the same solutions when they solved problems...a bit like convergence.
I come from that region, life must have been hard. Winter is cold and long, summers are short. Even with modern clothing I can't imagine living outside in winter. His facial features resembles the faces of the mountain farmers of my valley, formed by hard work, physically very strong people, far stronger than their looks would suggest.
The most likely reason why the shaft of the arrow that killed him was removed, while the copper axe, his arrows and all of his belongings were left there, is that both the killer's arrow on his body and Ötzi's belongings in the hands of the killer, would have been damning evidencies. Like most murder victims, Ötzi knew his killer. They were of the same community, or from communities very close.
How has nobody commented on the iceman recreations facial expressions? This was a fascinating watch. And literally had me in stitches when you kept showing the altered faces and the one of the man giving a bewildered insane stare was solid gold 😂😂 education and comedy all in one
I love the comment of "in alternating dark and light patterns, presumably because it looked fashionable", it's so important to remember these were real people with thoughts and opinions and critical thinking, not just apes with tools
The stories this guy could tell. However his body and equipment are a priceless window into the past. R.I.P. Otzi and thank you for the history lessons.
The killer probably retrieved his arrow simply because arrows were time consuming to make. If the arrow is still accessible after you've shot it, then it would be very practical to get at least the shaft back. In our eyes it would seem to be a rather cold-blooded action to do to a fellow human being, but hunters have done it to animals. Oetzi probably did that as well when he hunted, as the number of arrow shafts without heads in his possession could show.
_All_ technology and tools were labor intensive and therefore extemely precious back then. There's an element missing from this murder. Maybe the assailant was interrupted and chased off before he could finish looting his victim. We'll never know.
@@user-gk3lu1gg9t yes but that theory only works if you assume he’s a metal worker, but he could have done anything if the killer just didn’t take it to remain unknown
Several years after The Man in the Ice was published (1991, I think), there was an article in Science News (or Nature?) by one of the pathologists who also knew Traditional Chinese Medicine and identified Ötzi's "tattoos" as marking the acupuncture points for insertions to treat joint pains for all the observable arthritis in his body. There were charts tallying up his arthritis and the traditional points where his tattoos were. Odd coincidences.
One of the mushrooms that Otzi was carrying is known as an antibacterial/antiviral agent, and would be also effective in treating both the arthritis and digestive ailments he had.
This documentary is one of the best documentaries I’ve ever seen. I really appreciate your humility when you explain things we don’t currently understand about Ötzi. Other documentaries often present their facts with surety and finality but you explain what we know, what we might know, and what we don’t know.
This was the most interesting thing I've heard about this man. Thank you for giving detailed theories of how he could of died along with plenty more info about his life
That’s what they’re supposed to do. I read a series of novels years ago about the different ages of humans which made me hungry for more, leading me to read as much as I could about the history of humanity on more of a personal level instead of a group level. Articles like this could do much to broaden the interests of school age children.
Hearing your reconstruction of the circumstances of his death, I think it's very unlikely that whoever killed him were common thieves or sheep rustlers. It seems to me like somebody had some personal vendetta and just really wanted him dead. For what reason, no amount of archaeological evidence could possibly tell us. A prehistoric drama that's been lost to the ages.
Yeah, I mean that axe alone would have been worth alot back then you'd think whomever killed him would have taken his stuff. Or perhaps it was someone he knew and if they took it back people might know. We'll never know. But fascinating nonetheless.
Most likely he was a victim of misidentification. He was dressed in fur in a snowstorm in the mountain. He was probably hit. By a hunter who mistook him for a goat. The visibility was low because it was snowing and he was wearing fur. He was definitely not a warrior. He carried a pocket knife, an axe blade that would fit in your palm and a bunch of unusable arrows. He probably slipped on some ice and cut his hands on the rocks. This seems totally plausible given the circumstances. He wasnt a warrior he wasnt prepared to fight anyone. Thousands of people die in hunting accidents every year and nobody today dresses in deer fur in the woods.
@@jlrinc1420 On one hand, if he cut himself on a rock, it would be an easy track, and could be misidentified as a wounded animal to be accidentally shot by a hunter. On the other, Id assume an accidental fall onto a rock creating something resembling a defensive wound on an experienced mountain man travelling up and down mountains with broken and poorly maintained equipment is approaching the wrong side of Occam's razor. More pieces fit if it's a simple, he had a struggle, there was a chase, and he was caught. The only question then is why he was left with his belongings, and everything from superstition, to it being someone he knew and would be identified by stealing can explain that problem.
@@wodthehunter8145 but we dont know when the wound on his hand happened. He might have taken a fall and stopped to take care of his hand and been mistaken for goat while stopped. Occams razor says a hunting accident is way more likely than an attack. He was basically unarmed. None of his weapons could have brought down anything bigger than a rabbit. The idea that an unarmed man got attacked in a snowstorm and none of his gear was taken says they were not interested in his gear. It was an accident. I would bet its a hundred times more likely that any given hunter killed is killed by mistake than murder. Why would that would have been any different 3000 years ago. There was plenty of game and lots of land and very little competition for that game. Any conflicts would have been easy to avoid by simply moving on. There is just no reason at all that this would have been murder. The idea that someone would track someone down to kill them then leave their gear because they dont want to be caught doesnt make any sense. For that to be true these would have to have been people within a very small community. A small communtiy would have to rely on a guy like otzi for a lot of things. It would be near suicide to take out an experienced hunter from your own tribe. These communities were very sophisticated social structures they didnt just hunt you down because they got mad at you. Differences in groups were not setlled by murder. These were small groups who were probably family. It is unlikely that these small groups would be committing murder. If it was outside the group the copper would have been taken and they wouldnt have worried about having it. Every piece of evidence suggests a hunting accident. Who knows he may have been shot then fell and cut his hands. They came and took the arrow from his body. There should have been stab wounds besides the arrows.
This is such fascinating stuff. Back when he was found in the snow, they weren't kidding when they said that mummy would give scientists decades worth of discoveries. I've no doubt that this guy and those of his time who led similar lives were immensely tough and strong compared to most of us living in modern times. You can still kinda see that difference quite easily today in the difference in strength between, say, a modern person doing a desk-job and someone in a more physically demanding profession ... like a carpenter or a blacksmith. Folks back then probably also all had BMIs that modern men would sell their grandmothers for - not too many "oversized" human beings around at that time, I would wager. That said: If you're now thinking these were "better times", imagine a world without doctors, dentists, showers, indoor plumbing, toilet paper or modern drugs like antibiotics. The laundry list of all the ailments and parasites this guy had alone would be enough for me to be glad that I was born in the 20th century AD, not in ~3000 BC. :)
Dan, as always, great video. Your point about healthy modern people being diagnosed with scores of issues after a CT scan made me smile, but it’s also a great way to give your viewers perspective. It’s easy to view an historical record in absolute terms, but taking a step back gives us a better sense for a person or issue’s complexity. Keep up the good work!
It's very true. I think hard about all the times I've gotten hurt in 30+ years and all the information a CT scan could tell. "Broken two fingers, one arm, nose is all mashed up, and three ribs"
I'm obsessed with Otzi. My favourite thing about him are the *potentially* medicinal tattoos. Really makes you wonder what the world was like before people wrote stuff down
This is really great. I appreciate when we admit to not knowing and then we get to have fun and theorize what might be the truth. I love the idea of him as a bowhunter going after Ibex. I am Austrian/Italian and a bowhunter so it’s fun to think my ancestors doing what I still do today.
I'm very impressed with the level of technology this guy had access to back then. From the obvious tech of the copper axe to knowing about insulation of using grass in the soles of his sandals and everything in between. Very cool documentary.
Well, using grass as insulation in shoes probably goes all the way back to when the first people arrived at the sub-freeze steppes, i.e. maybe even before the latest ice age.
No offense, but I don't think that using grass as insulation in his shoes is not a big accomplishment for him...at all. His ancestors figured that out in their sleep ages earlier!!
we like to believe we're so different from the people back then because we have "technology" and we're so "advanced", but the time seperating us and them is really short in the great scale of things. Dinosaurs were here for far longer than humans and they have no achieved such an amount of developement humans have in the same short amount of time. Technology may develope, but the average human today does not differ much from an ice age human
All this scientific data and researches gives us the flesh and bones of the events and characters, yet it takes a great story teller like you to blow life into it! Very nice narration. I also felt kind of emotional about the two broken arrow shafts with heads. I shoot traditional bows and make/repair my wooden arrows, and obviously they break often, and I find myself more often than not collecting the broken ends to repair them at home. And these cost 0.50c a piece nowadays. But back in the days, these stone arrowheads would have been of immense value, no wonder he'd carry back with him. It makes total sense. I imagine him at his campfire preparing the tar glue to remount those heads on spare shafts, or redo the fletching binds like I'm doing sometimes...
Thank you! Yes the arrows are interesting. Perhaps you've read it but there is a great research paper on his bow and his arrows - plus another one found in a different pass. I've listed it in the sources part of the video description. There is an idea that he lost his original bow during an initial fight and that's when his arrows were broken. He started making a replacement bow but never got the chance to finish it. We know they were his arrows even if he didn't make them both himself. Because the touching up done on them matches that done on the rest of his lithics. If he had found or traded for good quality flint he should have been able to make more arrowheads. There's a good paper on his lithics too that discusses the arrowheads in detail. Apologies if you're already familiar with these papers just thought you would get a lot out of them.
@@DanDavisHistory Well I've been through second hand works about these documents and I've heard about this theory of the bow being a WIP basically, but thanks a lot for bringing these up anyways! It's difficult to be certain, but that would make a lot of sense. I like to think that he actually shot most of his arrows in defense prior to his hicking trip, sometimes between his first meal in the valley (indicated by lower altitude polens), probably in a wooded area, and his last one just before he headed for the mountains. What forced him so abruptly from a populated valley to suddenly seek shelter in the mountains with poorly maintained equipment (bow and arrows) if not a struggle or a fight? I think he lost most of his arrows shooting at attackers, or maybe he tried to attack some people himself, perhaps he was part of a small group, the rest of which died in a fight with people down the valley, and he, as the last survivor tried to flee while the valley dwellers chased him. That's what I always picture.
Whipworm infection seems to cause the immune system to relax - which can often ameliorate the (often inflammatory) effects of other immuno-related issues, such as asthma and IBS. It's interesting to note that high instances of whipworm tend to occur when communities of people use a communal area for defecation. Also, some whipworms can be caught from livestock - usually pigs.
I have to fix my lunch first, but the moment I'm back I am gonna watch this. Otzi is one of my favorite archaeological stories, has been ever since I first read about him as a kid in my Eyewitness book on early humans - it never fails to make me emotional that we can look into the (admittedly damaged) face of a Copper Age man, and know we'll never learn everything about his life and world, but still learn so much that we never would without him. I wonder what he'd think if he ever knew he was now a planet-wide celebrity in a far distant future he never could've imagined?
We need to remember that the list of his illnesses and injuries may give us a false view, as we get it all in one listing, while he was at it for years. What i mean, is, think about yourself and what would such scan show about your body. For me, 29yo male it owuld show -2-4 broken fingers -One of nuckles was split in half -Cut wound on head -most likely some dental issues, one tooth missing and replaced with a prosthethic one (including cut bone to fit it) -At least one cracked rib -Most likely something wrong with gastric tract (everyone has something wrong with it) -Trace of at least 3 long and hard illnesses -missing hair (i am bald) -countless scars on hands, legs etc. Currently one missing fingernail When you see list like this, your first thought is "get this man to a hospital!". Meanwhile there is a 100 kilo guy who lifts weights. Most of those injuries happened either at a young age or during work/hobby activities along years.
God damn, Ötzie was so damn tough, I don't know who he was as a person, but seeing what he was like, I absolutely can respect him for just his sheer toughness
Most people in those days were probably just as tough as he was - they all lived hard lives. To us he sounds really tough and hardy, but to them he was probably no tougher than anyone else.
@@DG-iw3yw Back when survival was a human's foremost priority, yes, they were all much tougher than we are now. This random old dude was built like an olympian. There are studies that suggest ancient humans had larger brains, and that ours have shrunk over time due to not needing the extra acuity just to survive another day.
this is one of the most amazing documentaries about Otzi i've seen!! didn't even realized it was almost 45min long, i was so captivated by the narration and care given to the info provided. Me personally being from Mexico, i wonder what amazing stories of my ancestors have been lost because forests and jungles don't preserve their remains, and because of the intervention of Conquistadors
Also, because you are Mexican, you are also probably of Spanish ancestry as well, meaning you have ancestors from Southern Europe, who have high amounts of Neolithic ancestry, making you especially related to Ötzie
avatar2350, A good try but there were no Conquistadors 5,000 years ago. And no Alps in Mexico. Also , as you say , forests and jungles do not preserve things very well . Dry deserts, maybe , if a body was very quickly buried in hot dry sand. Not to forget that even Conquistadors are historical.
That is a great point about how debilitating his medical issues really were. Things we would find horribly painful might be barely noticeable to a pre modern man who's had the issue for years. I'd hate to find out how many things are wrong with me after the best medical teams spend millions testing me
'Round where I live, the local traditions in the eastern American woodlands would call the loose frays of Otzi's cape "fringe". It's used mainly for wicking moisture away from the main body so as to dry quicker (remember Otzi was surrounded by ice and probably subject to a lot of wet stuff lol). Also our local ancestors say Fringe looked nice too lol.
This is incredibly interesting and I get the appeal of why so many people get hooked on the mystery of his death. Every single detail is a rabbit hole about so many interesting facts of world he lived in and how lived his life. I'm astonished they can even tell that he'd been going up and down the mountain before dying. I absolutely agree with you that if we were to get DNA tested and have our every nook and craky scanned, some serious stuff would come up. Hell, I'm a healthy 28 year old whose never broken a bone in my life and I'm pretty sure that if they did all those tests to me, they'd find out a long list of maladies. Otzi lived into his 40's in an era where the most advanced thing was herbal knowledge and we were still not entirely on top of the food chain. Gotta respect that, no matter what. Your narrationn was amazing! Keep up the great work!
The loose fringe of the grass cape is for better wicking and dripping properties, this is what "fringes" do. Thank you Dan for the interpretation of the white stone with the additional twisted leather lengths in a loop as a fastener kit. I wrote in a similar interpretation (with a diagram of how the stone makes that end easily belt fastened) to the museum staff ( in a video they actually asked what people thought that was for) that described the usefulness of being able to grab off a tie strip from the belt dispenser while holding a branch connection point to be lashed during construction, or the tying shut a series of bags, holding the tops closed while whipping off a tie strip from the set hanging from the loop with the stone being the around the belt "button" fasteners. This is much the same as available ties you described for tying up hunted fowl. Highest Regards!
Crazy to think that for all of recorded history Ötzi was just lying up on that mountain side with all the events we learn about transpiring in the world around him, oblivious to his presence and importance.
I think we're incredibly lucky that the oldest natural mummy in Europe also has one of the most amazing stories. He could and probably should have lead an ordinary and unremarkable life before dead and discovery, but no you could almost make a movie about his last moments
Extremely well done. I have studied and watched many videos of Otzi and this is the best by far. I am a Dentist and I hope and assume that the radiographs are actually his. Although blurry there are many notable observations including advanced periodontal disease and carious lesions and also he was missing his third molars (wisdom teeth). More impressive is the amount of information gathered by these researchers. Finding this man is like finding a live time capsule.
@@Klaus293 Missing 3rd molars while not common still occurs even today. Other than having very advanced periodontal disease I cannot imagine having them removed with the instruments available then even if pain management was somehow available furthermore the evidence of their previous presence woud be seen in the mandible.
@@sylvesterpalermo937People back then were not whiners that needed a week's worth of percodan for a tooth removal. Having a bad tooth removed is such a relief it's worth the temporary discomfort. Amish people have their teeth pulled as children sometimes just to prevent problems and they just yank them out with pliers and no pain killers leaving broken roots and chunks of broken jawbone around the socket. It's sick but it happens all the time.
I could sit and listen to the story of otzi a million times and never get tired of it. It's absolutely fascinating to learn about other hominids or prehistoric hominids. Imagine otzi one of the few with a metal axe in his time. Anyways his case is one of a kind and very amazing. Just makes you wonder what else is out there.
Even though I grew up in Germany and know a lot about it and have been following this topic for years, this has been super fascinating and so well told!
We will never know why Otzi died. Either a younger, jealous clan member (hence the copper axe being left) or he simply slipped his pursuers and just died alone, on the mountain, far from the attack site. Whether they were "friendlies" or not is immaterial. However he died, Otzi certainly gave us plenty to talk about and I love the movie made about him- despite the lack of dialogue it is a riveting tale that I thoroughly enjoyed. Excellent video, Dan, thanks for all your hard work!
Thank you. I remember when he was found in 1991. He feels like the past of us all in Europe. He takes us right back in such an emotional way to those days.
I've been obsessed with this story since it first Came out. I bet the world he lived in was beautiful in ways we will never understand. I wish we knew more. Like where's the guy that shot him? There's soooo much we don't know
Love the way you change the character of Ötzi by changing the hairdo and jawline ;-) Helps us see how easy it is to get drawn into the artist's preconceived ideas.
A bit late to the party, but just wanted to say - this is a really good, thorough, well-balanced, well-illustrated overview / update. Like a lot of people I’d heard dribs and drabs as they came out over the years, but this pulls it all together in a comprehensive and comprehensible way. Thanks!
The reason the axe was left behind and not taken by the killer was because you don't kill a man then take his axe , Because I'm guesting everyone knew everyone and its a pretty quick was to get caught red handed
I was totally absorbed in the show from the first moment till the end. You provided so many really fascinating details that i have never heard before in all the years since the discovery of Otzi. The whole thing is very high quality. I'm looking forward to watching your other work!
Amazing work! I remember the absolute astonishment in Europe when Otzi was found! It left a wonderful spark in my 7-year-old mind about the ancient world and how little we know. Keep on doing what you do, good sir!
No one has addressed the arrows without tips in the comments, so I feel a need to comment. Those arrows without tips were likely (possibly is a better term) blunt arrows used to hunt birds, particularly considering that he had a specific tool on the belt to carry hunted birds. An arrowhead would destroy too much meat on a bird, even modern hunter use blunt arrows to knock out birds/kill them with blunt impact as to preserve the meat. Modern arrows like this sometimes even have springloaded arms so that should the blunt edge start to penetrate too deeply it pushes the blunt head back as to not ruin the meat. Considering his bow, the blunt tip of the arrow likely was strong enough knock out or kill birds without penetration to preserve precious meat (even if his bow is powerful enough to penetrate with a blunt tip an experienced hunter would have knowledge of how far to draw the bow to adjust the force). Reasonably the arrows with tips were reserved for larger prey or foes. Not knowing better I don't think its unreasonable to believe that the arrowheads were intentionally left on mended arrows. If a human tried to pull out the arrow, possibly the shaft would have broken off so the tip stayed imbedded preventing easy removal, or for prey it would be more likely to break off and stay inside so the animal bleeds out rather than it being removed should the animal run past a tree or something that could dislodge the arrow.
I admire & respect your clarity about what evidence shows, and how it changes interpretations over time with differing analyses applied to that evidence.
Nice video! I remember hearing about Ötzi when I was a kid, and the popular depiction often made him out to be a primitive, 'caveman', not a member of a complex agricultural society that was already using metal. I'm finishing my Master's thesis on the Hill of Tara in Ireland, so I have been reading quite a bit about Europe from around this time.
I've loved archaeology and paleontology since I first learned to read, and findings like this truly are gifts to our knowledge base - and so is this video. 👍
Absolutely love it. Your channel is the best for Copper Age, bronze age. Thank you for putting this all together. I learn so much every time I watch your videos.
@DanDavisHostory: SO appreciate your wide perspective, comprehensive look at prehistoric culture and the evidence we have for forming opinion. It so clearly demonstrate the dilemma of certitude when we have only limited knowledge. Thank you for publishing such excellent content.
Just imagine all of the different events that happened all around the whole world, - and all through each and every one - Otzi was always lying right there, in that very same spot; a silent witness always right there, somebody who was actually personally present through more than five thousand years of world history.
He was there while Italians and Austrians fought in the 1st World War right in that place! Sometimes Alps glaciers still reveal some frozen soldier of WW1 preserved under the ice.
Now that you mentioned it, thats actually pretty cool. Hannibal crossing the Alps, Henry the IV going to Canossa, World War one with its Alpine Battlegrounds... And Ötzi was there, a silent witness to all these things. Amazing.
One thing, I have speculated, is that the reason the highly prized copper axe was left, is that it could have been instantly recognizable as belonging to Ötzi. That if the man, or men who killed him returned with it, everyone would have immediately known what they did. So they had to leave it, no matter how valuable it might have been, to keep Ötzi's murder a secret.
Yes, the Polizia di Stato would of arrested him and thrown him in prison. (sarcasm). Just as telling, no hunter would of left behind his or somebody else's arrowheads, while they can make more, they were still time consuming to find the "right" chert and fashion more, that made them valuable. He very well may of been shot but was able to lose his attacker before he died. That his skin was so well preserved (no evident of rodent or insect damage) points that he wasn't dead for too many days before he was covered in snow. Snowstorms are very frequent at high altitudes. In some seasons they are almost a daily occurrence.
I’ve always thought the axe was the reason for his death. Either he was part of a trading mission taking the axe to or returning it from a neighbouring settlement or he was part of a raiding party attempting to steal the axe.
Excellent video! Otzi is an amazing window into ages past. I do have to say I increasingly lean towards the thought he was a hunter. His clothing is particularly built for alpine weather and potentially as a form of camoflauge. Considering that many Neolithic peoples wore woven cloth his more rugged, leather and fur based outfit definitely suggests some sort of specialized lifestyle. That said, we will never know for sure.
hello, thank you very much for your great documentary. I am from Austria and I remember well the time when Ötzi was found. What was most surprising to most people was the place he was found in. There is a local legend(or several) telling about a hunter that commited some type of sacrileg(either killing and eating a holy animal, or hurting the bone of a holy animal). However he did something he was not suposed to do. Therefore A Salige Woman would punish him for doing so, which is why the arrow with which he killed the animal was flying into his own back(just like into the animals before) and he died and disapeared in a place called the backwards ice. thats the animal Ötzi was eating and the place he was found in. The story was told centuries before Ötzi was found, I dont know how long you could trace it back. But the stories about the Saligen also tell that they are different people than "us" because they would not grow cereals, which is why you often could make them happy by a gift of bread....the Saligen live in higher altitutes and know much about animals(wild) and herbs(wild)...
Fascinating stuff. I swear the Alps is one of the most beautiful spots on earth. I visited the German and Austrian areas a few years back. Wish I could go again.
Really good video, interesting and informative and even presented in an entertaining fashion. Asking questions and posing answers rather than giving a dry lecture. Well done.
What I know about Ötzi at LEAST tripled from watching this video. Examining multiple possibilities and gauging their likelihood and how they've changed with the research tells a fascinating story -- even stressing the uncertainty of what's known about him paints him as more of a "person" than a "specimen". Really fires up the imagination and got me wondering how much of the sympathy I now feel for the guy is justified, or if he had it coming!
What drives me nuts about Otzi's story is not knowing if he's a hero or a villain... I wish some new evidence would be discovered that would shed some new light on the story... This episode was excellent - thank you!
Considering the time of history, Otzi's belongings do not look like something an ordinary man would posses back in those days. Not just the copper axe, but his clothes and other items too. So he seems to be of a high social status, perhaps even a local tribe chief, and therefore likely to be killed in a tribal war. Also, it is possible that Otzi was accompanied by a friend, who pulled an arrow and then ran for help, but failed to return, because he himself was slain too/forced to retreat by superior enemy numbers/fell off a cliff, or maybe a sudden blizzard came burring Otzi's body and making it impossible to find him. That would explain why he left untouched. So many imaginable scenarios.
What baffles me is this: If we assume Ötzi was on his own and running/hiding in Terrain that he knew perfectly well, than tracking him down is next level. I don't think any humans nowadays are that familiar with the environment, truly amazing.
This is such a fascinating documentary. As a retired detective I would like to offer a very unscientific insight during the moments before his death, I say murder and here is why. He was shot at a high altitude maybe trying to escape up a mountain to fend off his pursuers using his muscles in his legs to carry him up the mountain. The author said his leg muscles were well developed suggesting he was a strong hiker up terrain at a high altitude that would be more difficult to breath unless one is acclimated to higher altitudes. The shot placement was in the general area of his thorax. An excellent and intentional strike from an arrow on a moving target. I think a closer examination of the bow and arrow the victim carried would be in order. A replica of both then tested by a modern day expert in that style of weaponry could lead to information of how accurate one can be at varied distances given the amount of penetration of the arrow. The fact the arrow was removed from the body shows purpose of trying to conceal who the assailant was. The making of an accurate arrow is as much of an art form as it is a skill. So the suspect would know that flint knapping and the shaft along with the feathering can be unique to a maker and the maker could tell who he made that arrow for. Leading village authorities to the perpetrator. I believe that organized communities would have rules during this time period. One wouldn’t be allowed to hunt a person down without cause I would think. And doing so would bear consequences. The fact the victim had a copper axe and that copper axe wasn’t from that area and those things had commercial value suggest the perpetrator wasn’t motivated to stealing or knew that the axe would be traced to the victim . Either way the suspect didn’t seem interested to take it. What we don’t know is if the victim had other things of value that the perpetrator wanted more than the victims axe, bow, arrow and clothing. The author said the victim was a “sharped dressed man” and that can create jealousy as we and I mean we who has seen the ZZ Top music video 1983. Or the victim had dinner in a near by community as a guest and spied the host daughter and kidnapped her and father wanted her back because she was promised to Zack and Zack was the man sent to hunt the victim down.Or the victim could have been married and she didn’t like him anymore and had a lover who killed the victim to steal the victims wife. I suggest these motives in this paragraph was thrown in for fun. Again the author captured my intreats. And to Otzi, you may have not been well known in your time but now scientists and we history enthusiast are learning many more things from your time that is 5,000 years ago, wow how fantastic. But from this time forward you well not be forgotten. RIP.
He didn't die in the 2000, he died in the 3000s BC. There was no police. People lived in small family clans of several to several dozen individuals. As a family. There were no laws or authorities, just common sense on what is right or wrong. There weren't even Authorities as such. They made major decisions as a group, rather than electing individuals to make decisions. There were leaders of course, but leading doesn't mean you get to unilaterally decide on things. Thw killer also didn't bother pulling out the arrowhead, just the shaft. Meaning they didn't particularly try hiding anything.
@vitas75 How do you know that a tribal people didn't have societal rules and consequences for breaking them? That's probably the dumbest thing I've ever heard about humanity. Seriously...how do you think these people survived and lived together in groups without social rules and consequences? They just hugged it out? Jfc. Every tribal people have them and have had them as far back as they've been writing things down and we can prove it. Tribes, all over the world, every single one in history, MUST have a social order and consequences for breaking those taboos or else they couldn't form social groups and keep each other alive and they'd have all killed each other off. That's like Julius Ceasars saying that druids were sacrificing people practically every day...uh...if you're killing people all the time with no consequences, you're gonna run out of people pretty fast.
Considering how arrows take time and material to manufacture it's common to keep your arrows as long as possible. I think removal from the body was an act of practicality rather than hiding evidence.
I've seen a LOT of videos on Otzi but none have tied it together as coherently and imaginatively. I hope 🤞🤞🤞🤞to teach an Anthropology course next year and this would be an excellent way to discuss the Neolithic/ Bronze Age transition as well as the breadth of information we can now access through the archaeological sciences.
What a wonderful video this is. It is of the highest quality in terms of presentation and informative content that is similar, or better, than that made by much bigger organisations. Very well done Dan Davis.
According to 23 and me, I am genetically related to this man. How incredible is science?!? That I, in 2023, can learn about this ancestor of mine from so very long ago is absolutely amazing! Thank you for sharing this fascinating work!
I think people buried food in antiseptic sphagnum moss in holes in the ground or snow,so I think the moss fragments came from a food rapping of sphagnum moss not from his finger's.a good example is perfectly preserved gigantic ball's of cheese found in the irish bog's perfectly preserved after thousands of year's,the sphagnum moss,because of it's anti septic/antiviral properties it was commonly used as a wound dressing,but also as a food rapper
Awesome subject, in my opinion, the finding of Otzi was one of the greatest events ever for the advancement of our understanding of copper age life, and the miraculous, pristine survival of his body and equipment are invaluable to historians.
i went to see otzi in the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology, it's truly amazing how much we have learned just from this one superbly well preserved guy. what would he think to know he's on display.
I had been pushing this a bit forward because of the length and my available time. It's an exquisite documentary that got me completely immersed in it. I love how you present the different theories going around and the description of the periode in a wider sense. I just know what I'm going to dream about tonight. Thank you very much.
Thanks for watching. If you enjoyed the video please hit "like" as it makes a big difference.
Enter at www.omaze.com/dandavis for your chance to win a trip of a lifetime on the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, and support a great cause, International Medical Corps.
Liked. Shared. Thumbs Up 👍
@@michaelbehrens1660 thank you very much Michael.
how is the third book of Godborn coming up?
I hit like before I watched it, all these videos are so, so good. This one I have enjoyed and is the most anticipated of all so far. Great job on it! 😁👍👊😎
sorry i i i didn’t even
Otzi is a gift to us through the ages. Let's also remember the man, someone's son, brother, probably father. When he didn't come back, he was missed, a family probably went hungry.🌷
I'm just so curious what happened to him.
Was it just a random act of violence/ theft? It seems he had some valuable stuff on him that a thief would want to keep.
It's so brutal to understand by modern standards, but perhaps he WAS sacrificed because he was 'getting too old'
Maybe this was some sort of common ritual for ancient people:
Honored man is getting too old. He's 'sent on a final journey'. He's followed by a young hunter - the hunter has a 'sacred' but reluctant purpose to deliver a
'quick death'
...Or maybe this precious gift of a man was just randomly slaughtered by a piece of shit.
This man's importance to humanity is huge. I hope that in some realm, he can see that.
Or maybe he was a pedophile. No way to know
I prefer a different scenario. Otzi was a bachelor from another village far away. He'd shown up several times bringing game and trade articles, but this time he was down on his luck, arrows needed points and Fletching, and no trade Goods. He was rebuked. So he grabbed a young girl and tried to abscond with her. He was chased by her relatives and friends, took an arrow in the back, but was able to hole up bbn in a defensive position. The girl got away, but he died of exposure in a spot that covered him with ice and preserved his body.
The evidence suggest that he was most likely a outcast or criminal that was on the run and was caught and shot as is the lack of interest of claiming any of his gear and was mostly likely not a minor offense. He was found , that took who know how many days and then killed.
@@DarkstarMystic You watch too many movies thats very much in contrast to human nature
If Ötzi was murdered, then it seems to me, people that killed him really seriously wanted him dead. All that ascending, decending indicates a pursuit, and it takes dedication, great will and hatred to chase someone like that in such harsh mountanous environment. Was it a blood feud? Revenge? Eye for an eye? If only dead man could speak.
the main hypothesis is that they did a Hunger Games style hunt of him and the killer became the new Chieftain. They found like 8 peoples blood on his knife and arrows so he went down fighting
Or rival clans, for all we know this could be a sense of an ambush with one clan fighting anther in a primitive war. Maybe Otzi was sent to scout out the enemy camp or make peace which explains why he was in the mountains in the first place he may of had to go up there to reach them quickly
Otzi was a Blood, and his killers were Crips probably
I'd fathom a guess his kit was un piliged out of respect . Withseveral different blood stains on his knife this is my view.
@@timway6839 that would make a lot of sense. i think forensic evidence said he killed his killer and hiked off the wound into the mountain pass. but surely they would have wanted to get him
I think it's poetic that, in a sense, his journey continued long after his death. Ultimately he journeyed into a future that could learn much about his life and times from his remains. In a macabre way, I think that's sort of beautiful.
Commenting again now that I've finished the whole video. I feel a deep sense of gratitude for his life and the look into it his near-miraculous preservation gifted us. I remember learning about him in middle school "social studies" class lol, I thought he was interesting back then... but this video was a whole new level of detail, and it's cool to see how much we've learned since then!!
It is a form of immortality to be rediscovered in this way.
Hi
Well said.
5:52 There's a practical reason for the ends of his cape being unwoven. Like any fringed garment, the loose ends help to shed water by breaking up the surface tension.
I might also have the same function as the famous fringe on the jackets Davey Crockett and other pioneers wore: to discourage swarms of horse flies.
It would have made a reasonable blind too set up with the fringe at the top.
I'm sorry to tell you but you're wrong the reason you have Fringe just like the backwoods Tennessee boys the colonial days was it shook the bugs off of you going through the brush ticks will kill you
I've seen those same capes used by farmers in Japan as raincoats. They look almost exactly the same. Of course they are not so much in use these days, but they are still being used by a few old farmers here and there.
I love how they make up EXACTLY what happened to him. Like they were there. Humans are so full of shit.
The Copper Age is another one of those things we didn't learn about in school and didn't read about in popular science magazines, and yet it was such an important, formative period at least for Europe. Glad you've stepped up to the task of educating people!
Thank you, Magnus. It is a fascinating period. I suspect there were a lot more copper tools around than we see in the archeological record, too.
@@DanDavisHistory absolutely. Even today people will collect, sell and recycle scrap metal. And it could only have been more valuable to recycle it back in those days.
It's curious to think that some miniscule part of my ancestors old copper axe can be in the electronics of the computer I'm writing this on, or the transmission lines for the power I'm charging it with.
I suspect the Copper Age gets bubrushed over because it was, at least when I was a kid, perceived of as being very short with copper being perceived in the modern day as a soft metal useless for anything by ornaments in comparison to bronze, at least in the stuff I read early on. As Dan mentions in the video, too, Copper was valuable enough to just recast rather than discard, meaning there might be a thousand or more years of copper history we don't know anything about because of recycling.
So remember, kids: don't recycle! You're just making future archeologists' job harder!
Where did you go to school? We learned loads of stuff from iron and copper age here i Croatia. And we have load's of sights related to that period
@@azteccroatia1496 we didn't cover it in school here in the UK but since my parents house was virtually made of books I didn't rely on school for my learning thankfully.
I desperately want to sit at a campfire and have a conversation with him. He wasn't an animal, he was a man who probably had kids or a woman missing him. RIP Otzi.
As you should. He likely would have had great stories to tell.
Dude are you for real? Calm down 😂😂
@@frankthetank8050 Okay Mr. The Tank.
Gnushk! That one is my favorite Stone Age story.
He was my great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great
Grandfather
We still have alot of family stories passed down from him
I should be able to answer any questions you have it will all most be like chatting to him
he was at 46 scalling a mountain in 3k bc, I think that's very impressive
well he did die while at it but you gotta give him props for trying
@@vitorcerqueira2172 not from the climb but from being murdered
You’ve never met my dad
yes, it's strange that in Medieval times, people were scared to climb mountains
@@spencerwinchester29178 ⁹the the important important 👏👏9999o999 X89
WRT him looking "older", that's from a life lived outdoors. Go to any rural area especially a fishing community and try to guess the men's ages. UV light ages you, and you get a double dose when you're in a boat on the water. We work indoors, we have moisturizers and exfoliants and god knows what. And we worship "a youthful look". We look young for our age these days. He just worked outdoors a lot, high up in the mountains. Lots of UV exposure.
Same sun-damage happened to Colonel Gadaffi.
Fortunately, he had a top-notch Brazilian plastic surgeon to restore his youthful looks.
0r could have been a booze merchant
He could afford to go bow hunting in the Alps, but he couldn't afford sunscreen? Some people have messed up priorities.
Even snow will give double exposure to uv, which fits the context.
@@SeverusFelix Those valley people can only afford a thatched hut. They aren't frugal with their resources. You can't afford a proper roundhouse if you spend all your flint on avacado toast. Back in my day, we saved everything. The young people today, don't value anything. My father would have killed me if I took a precious copper axe up in mountains like that. Tsktsktsk. The young people are going to the dogs.
Ötzi is probably the most fascinating arheological discovery in our time. We are so fortunate that a time capsule like his remains appeared when science was able to make so much out of it.
Regarding his axe remaining by the corpse, it may be because he and his killer were part of the same community. The killer removed his own arrow, but left Ötzi's valuable posessions. If the killer had stolen anything, people in their community could recognize the items as belonging to Ötzi, and if the body was found, someone may recognize the arrow.
Sometimes the simplest explaination is the right one. Anytime archeologists use the methaphysical argument it sounds like they are out of ideas, although metsphysics no doubt played a large role in prehistoric times.
Maybe they had better gear and they did steal something else from him. There's no way to know. You'd think they'd take the copper head at least though... Or maybe there was a stigma surrounding stealing but not killing? Like an honor killing but you can't take the possessions?
I’ve a lot of media about this guy but this is the most detailed documentary I’ve ever seen about him. Several facts and alternative reconstructions I hadn’t seen before
Thank you.
Right? I'm a pretty big archaeology & anthropology nerd in general, but I've followed the discoveries around Ötzi since he was first found back in the 90s - and I was just thinking the same thing
The fact that he was murdered is new to me.
have you seen the movie ICEMAN? if you haven't I recommend it.
@@huntermcclovio4517 I saw the 1984 movie (I was 14) bawled my brains out at the ending. Now when I watch it it makes a bit more sense to me.
Perhaps Otzi was murdered by a member of his own tribe over some local dispute. His valuable axe was left behind on the mountain because possessing it would have identified the killer or started a blood feud.
possible. we'll never know definitely. what we can do is assumption based on facts we know, like artifacts, geofacts, biofacts as well as general human behaviour.
That’s very likely. We may never know.
Maybe one started anyway! People may have known about the bad blood
Yes, in my mind the fact that his possessions were left untouched is quite an important clue. In this time period it was quite rare to waste resources and really the only thing that makes sense is what you suggest, that the killer would have been identified if he returned to his village with Otzi's tools and possessions. Also could be why the killer took the time to retrieve the fatal arrow shaft as perhaps it had some identifiable properties as well. Any roving band of bandits, warring tribe or random stranger would have certainly pilfered bounty or taken 'trophies.' Doesn't rule out an accidental killing or hunting accident as perhaps the person could have been ashamed and returned with a story of Otzi simply going missing.
It suggests he knew his killer.
Otzi's friend: "We're lost"
Otzi: "No we're not."
3months later......
Otzi: "We're lost"
*friend aims bow at Otzi*
That's funny man!!
😂😂😂
😂
The new theory
friend: *always have been...
It made me laugh when you pointed out that the ice man was not vegan or vegetarian. Only people who have a overabundance of food can afford to choose what they eat. Being vegan or vegetarian is a modern life choice that would be quickly forgotten if our current supply chain broke down. Survivers are omnivores.
Yes I think calling him vegan was more the media reporting than the researchers but they didn't find any suggestion of animal proteins and fats in his hair.
Lol no vegan would have worn his pretty fur leggings and bear skin hat.
Pythagoras and his entire school was vegetarian, some 2,500 years ago, hardly 'modern'...
@@magar5862 a lot of religious cults believed in "holy anorexia". Starving yourself is still considered something spiritual.
@@magar5862 Entirely modern, actually. Pythagoras was a city dweller, his food was bought in markets, and his time was spent in the study of mathematics. He led a very modern lifestyle in comparison to the people of the Chalcolithic.
I am very impressed by the respect you have for ancient cultures and beliefs - you never denigrate how societies from back then considered things, such as smithing/metalworking and the perceived metaphysics surrounding it. You speak about it as if it's a perfectly legitimate worldview and I appreciate that greatly; I feel it communicates a tremendous, and proper, amount of respect to those that came before us. It respects the logic they had, and showcases how sensible the way they interacted with their world was. Cheers, Mr. Davis. Phenomenal work specifically relating to the topic, too.
Thank you very much, very kind of you.
See _The Forge and the Crucible: The Origins and Structure of Alchemy_ by Mircea Eliade.
Years ago I visited Ötzi in his museum and his gras-cape really cought my eye (~ 6:00),
because in Japan I bought a book with early photographs of japanese people and one of them portaited a man wearing a similar cape.
It seems that around the world people came to the same solutions when they solved problems...a bit like convergence.
Straw capes were commonly worn in China, Korea and Japan.
Hi
Rain-coat.
I come from that region, life must have been hard. Winter is cold and long, summers are short. Even with modern clothing I can't imagine living outside in winter. His facial features resembles the faces of the mountain farmers of my valley, formed by hard work, physically very strong people, far stronger than their looks would suggest.
i'm from there as well. griasdi 😉
@@cccarl Servus, aus welchem Dorf kommst du? Moahofn?
@@griffith500tvr van puschtertol, ondra seite va do grenze 🙂
@@cccarl Sterzing?
@@griffith500tvr Bruneck 🙌
The most likely reason why the shaft of the arrow that killed him was removed, while the copper axe, his arrows and all of his belongings were left there, is that both the killer's arrow on his body and Ötzi's belongings in the hands of the killer, would have been damning evidencies. Like most murder victims, Ötzi knew his killer. They were of the same community, or from communities very close.
They could have hidden it and sold it later.
@@Ijusthopeitsquick That's a risky move. Better to make a clean get away. Maybe his killer had better gear.
I bet it was a jealousy ex. B**ches be trippin yo! for thousands of years.🤪
And it wouldn't surprise me if, like most murders, it was committed over property or a woman.
@@JS-ir7wh otzi had mid game loot but his killers had end game loot thats why they didnt bother taking his level 4 axe
This is by far the best and most thorough treatment of Outzi.
Thanks much, Dan!
*Ötzi
How has nobody commented on the iceman recreations facial expressions? This was a fascinating watch. And literally had me in stitches when you kept showing the altered faces and the one of the man giving a bewildered insane stare was solid gold 😂😂 education and comedy all in one
The different facial expressions absolutely clicked something open in my mind, and Ötzi jumped to life!
So thanks, Digital Artist, bravo! And brava!
It was the smile was funny
Otherwise known as the "Yabba-dabba-doo" expression popularised by Fred Flintstone.....
I like his perfect teeth in the smiling one. Must have had a great Neolithic dentistry plan!
He looks a lot like a physicist I know. Maybe they are related. 😀
I love the comment of "in alternating dark and light patterns, presumably because it looked fashionable", it's so important to remember these were real people with thoughts and opinions and critical thinking, not just apes with tools
The stories this guy could tell. However his body and equipment are a priceless window into the past. R.I.P. Otzi and thank you for the history lessons.
My jaw dropped when I saw it was 43 minutes long!
You deserve a thumbs up for sure, just marvelous
Same here! I was so excited!
The killer probably retrieved his arrow simply because arrows were time consuming to make. If the arrow is still accessible after you've shot it, then it would be very practical to get at least the shaft back. In our eyes it would seem to be a rather cold-blooded action to do to a fellow human being, but hunters have done it to animals. Oetzi probably did that as well when he hunted, as the number of arrow shafts without heads in his possession could show.
it's much more likely that the murderer would have taken the axe, a far more valuable tool, than a used arrow.
_All_ technology and tools were labor intensive and therefore extemely precious back then.
There's an element missing from this murder. Maybe the assailant was interrupted and chased off before he could finish looting his victim.
We'll never know.
@@helloxyz maybe the murder knew his family and didn’t want to be discovered by using his tools
@@nathannicelley7502 the video says that metal workers could have been seen as shamans and the murderer may been superstitious about his possessions.
@@user-gk3lu1gg9t yes but that theory only works if you assume he’s a metal worker, but he could have done anything if the killer just didn’t take it to remain unknown
Several years after The Man in the Ice was published (1991, I think), there was an article in Science News (or Nature?) by one of the pathologists who also knew Traditional Chinese Medicine and identified Ötzi's "tattoos" as marking the acupuncture points for insertions to treat joint pains for all the observable arthritis in his body. There were charts tallying up his arthritis and the traditional points where his tattoos were. Odd coincidences.
These types of "news" outlets are not reliable, and the Chinese have lied about acupuncture all the time...
He wasn't Asian if that's what you're implying. His DNA was almost entirely neolithic early European farmer.
No but this is the earliest evidence of acupuncture, 2000 years before it appeared in China so you can imply the opposite.
One of the mushrooms that Otzi was carrying is known as an antibacterial/antiviral agent, and would be also effective in treating both the arthritis and digestive ailments he had.
i just wanna sit down and have a beer with ötzi. talk to him about his life & times. he is hands down one of my favorite “ancient” humans.
I wanna share a banana with Lucy
@@scottydu81 😂😂😂👍👍👍 Best reply mate...
@@scottydu81 Lucy who?
@@yankee2666 She was the Australopithecus afarensis skeleton found in ethiopier
Honestly he seems like a guy who would've loved beer if he was born a few thousand years later
This documentary is one of the best documentaries I’ve ever seen. I really appreciate your humility when you explain things we don’t currently understand about Ötzi. Other documentaries often present their facts with surety and finality but you explain what we know, what we might know, and what we don’t know.
Hear hear
I'm gonna say what the last guy said ,. " Hear here ",. miss spelling intended . Lol
This was the most interesting thing I've heard about this man. Thank you for giving detailed theories of how he could of died along with plenty more info about his life
The big problem with these videos is that they always leave you wanting to learn even more!
Not a problem though really, if you're here watching this I know your thirst for knowledge will never be quenched 😎😎😎
That’s what they’re supposed to do. I read a series of novels years ago about the different ages of humans which made me hungry for more, leading me to read as much as I could about the history of humanity on more of a personal level instead of a group level. Articles like this could do much to broaden the interests of school age children.
Hearing your reconstruction of the circumstances of his death, I think it's very unlikely that whoever killed him were common thieves or sheep rustlers. It seems to me like somebody had some personal vendetta and just really wanted him dead. For what reason, no amount of archaeological evidence could possibly tell us. A prehistoric drama that's been lost to the ages.
Yeah, I mean that axe alone would have been worth alot back then you'd think whomever killed him would have taken his stuff. Or perhaps it was someone he knew and if they took it back people might know. We'll never know. But fascinating nonetheless.
Most likely he was a victim of misidentification. He was dressed in fur in a snowstorm in the mountain. He was probably hit. By a hunter who mistook him for a goat. The visibility was low because it was snowing and he was wearing fur. He was definitely not a warrior. He carried a pocket knife, an axe blade that would fit in your palm and a bunch of unusable arrows. He probably slipped on some ice and cut his hands on the rocks. This seems totally plausible given the circumstances. He wasnt a warrior he wasnt prepared to fight anyone. Thousands of people die in hunting accidents every year and nobody today dresses in deer fur in the woods.
@@jlrinc1420 On one hand, if he cut himself on a rock, it would be an easy track, and could be misidentified as a wounded animal to be accidentally shot by a hunter. On the other, Id assume an accidental fall onto a rock creating something resembling a defensive wound on an experienced mountain man travelling up and down mountains with broken and poorly maintained equipment is approaching the wrong side of Occam's razor. More pieces fit if it's a simple, he had a struggle, there was a chase, and he was caught. The only question then is why he was left with his belongings, and everything from superstition, to it being someone he knew and would be identified by stealing can explain that problem.
@@wodthehunter8145 but we dont know when the wound on his hand happened. He might have taken a fall and stopped to take care of his hand and been mistaken for goat while stopped. Occams razor says a hunting accident is way more likely than an attack. He was basically unarmed. None of his weapons could have brought down anything bigger than a rabbit. The idea that an unarmed man got attacked in a snowstorm and none of his gear was taken says they were not interested in his gear. It was an accident.
I would bet its a hundred times more likely that any given hunter killed is killed by mistake than murder. Why would that would have been any different 3000 years ago. There was plenty of game and lots of land and very little competition for that game. Any conflicts would have been easy to avoid by simply moving on. There is just no reason at all that this would have been murder.
The idea that someone would track someone down to kill them then leave their gear because they dont want to be caught doesnt make any sense. For that to be true these would have to have been people within a very small community. A small communtiy would have to rely on a guy like otzi for a lot of things. It would be near suicide to take out an experienced hunter from your own tribe. These communities were very sophisticated social structures they didnt just hunt you down because they got mad at you. Differences in groups were not setlled by murder. These were small groups who were probably family. It is unlikely that these small groups would be committing murder. If it was outside the group the copper would have been taken and they wouldnt have worried about having it. Every piece of evidence suggests a hunting accident. Who knows he may have been shot then fell and cut his hands. They came and took the arrow from his body. There should have been stab wounds besides the arrows.
Or as happens regularly even today he fell and was killed by his own Arrow
This is such fascinating stuff. Back when he was found in the snow, they weren't kidding when they said that mummy would give scientists decades worth of discoveries.
I've no doubt that this guy and those of his time who led similar lives were immensely tough and strong compared to most of us living in modern times. You can still kinda see that difference quite easily today in the difference in strength between, say, a modern person doing a desk-job and someone in a more physically demanding profession ... like a carpenter or a blacksmith.
Folks back then probably also all had BMIs that modern men would sell their grandmothers for - not too many "oversized" human beings around at that time, I would wager. That said: If you're now thinking these were "better times", imagine a world without doctors, dentists, showers, indoor plumbing, toilet paper or modern drugs like antibiotics. The laundry list of all the ailments and parasites this guy had alone would be enough for me to be glad that I was born in the 20th century AD, not in ~3000 BC. :)
Dan, as always, great video. Your point about healthy modern people being diagnosed with scores of issues after a CT scan made me smile, but it’s also a great way to give your viewers perspective. It’s easy to view an historical record in absolute terms, but taking a step back gives us a better sense for a person or issue’s complexity. Keep up the good work!
It's very true. I think hard about all the times I've gotten hurt in 30+ years and all the information a CT scan could tell. "Broken two fingers, one arm, nose is all mashed up, and three ribs"
I'm obsessed with Otzi. My favourite thing about him are the *potentially* medicinal tattoos. Really makes you wonder what the world was like before people wrote stuff down
People stopped writing stuff down with the smartphone.
Right - we're regressing.
This is really great. I appreciate when we admit to not knowing and then we get to have fun and theorize what might be the truth. I love the idea of him as a bowhunter going after Ibex. I am Austrian/Italian and a bowhunter so it’s fun to think my ancestors doing what I still do today.
I'm very impressed with the level of technology this guy had access to back then. From the obvious tech of the copper axe to knowing about insulation of using grass in the soles of his sandals and everything in between. Very cool documentary.
Well, using grass as insulation in shoes probably goes all the way back to when the first people arrived at the sub-freeze steppes, i.e. maybe even before the latest ice age.
Why? They had the same brains we do, they liked to be comfortable, just like we do. So why would that surprise yiu?
No offense, but I don't think that using grass as insulation in his shoes is not a big accomplishment for him...at all. His ancestors figured that out in their sleep ages earlier!!
we like to believe we're so different from the people back then because we have "technology" and we're so "advanced", but the time seperating us and them is really short in the great scale of things. Dinosaurs were here for far longer than humans and they have no achieved such an amount of developement humans have in the same short amount of time. Technology may develope, but the average human today does not differ much from an ice age human
All this scientific data and researches gives us the flesh and bones of the events and characters, yet it takes a great story teller like you to blow life into it! Very nice narration. I also felt kind of emotional about the two broken arrow shafts with heads. I shoot traditional bows and make/repair my wooden arrows, and obviously they break often, and I find myself more often than not collecting the broken ends to repair them at home. And these cost 0.50c a piece nowadays. But back in the days, these stone arrowheads would have been of immense value, no wonder he'd carry back with him. It makes total sense. I imagine him at his campfire preparing the tar glue to remount those heads on spare shafts, or redo the fletching binds like I'm doing sometimes...
Thank you! Yes the arrows are interesting. Perhaps you've read it but there is a great research paper on his bow and his arrows - plus another one found in a different pass. I've listed it in the sources part of the video description.
There is an idea that he lost his original bow during an initial fight and that's when his arrows were broken. He started making a replacement bow but never got the chance to finish it.
We know they were his arrows even if he didn't make them both himself. Because the touching up done on them matches that done on the rest of his lithics.
If he had found or traded for good quality flint he should have been able to make more arrowheads.
There's a good paper on his lithics too that discusses the arrowheads in detail.
Apologies if you're already familiar with these papers just thought you would get a lot out of them.
@@DanDavisHistory Well I've been through second hand works about these documents and I've heard about this theory of the bow being a WIP basically, but thanks a lot for bringing these up anyways! It's difficult to be certain, but that would make a lot of sense. I like to think that he actually shot most of his arrows in defense prior to his hicking trip, sometimes between his first meal in the valley (indicated by lower altitude polens), probably in a wooded area, and his last one just before he headed for the mountains. What forced him so abruptly from a populated valley to suddenly seek shelter in the mountains with poorly maintained equipment (bow and arrows) if not a struggle or a fight? I think he lost most of his arrows shooting at attackers, or maybe he tried to attack some people himself, perhaps he was part of a small group, the rest of which died in a fight with people down the valley, and he, as the last survivor tried to flee while the valley dwellers chased him. That's what I always picture.
@@DanDavisHistory Dan have you seen the movie ICEMAN?
Except it would smell pretty bad. Maybe I missed it but I wonder how bad might have smelt?
@@garydownes1594 Not sure what you're talking about tbh.
that was absolutely fascinating to watch. thank you dan davis you narrate history fantastically.
Whipworm infection seems to cause the immune system to relax - which can often ameliorate the (often inflammatory) effects of other immuno-related issues, such as asthma and IBS.
It's interesting to note that high instances of whipworm tend to occur when communities of people use a communal area for defecation. Also, some whipworms can be caught from livestock - usually pigs.
Gives a new sense of meaning to people who like butt stuff.
I have to fix my lunch first, but the moment I'm back I am gonna watch this. Otzi is one of my favorite archaeological stories, has been ever since I first read about him as a kid in my Eyewitness book on early humans - it never fails to make me emotional that we can look into the (admittedly damaged) face of a Copper Age man, and know we'll never learn everything about his life and world, but still learn so much that we never would without him. I wonder what he'd think if he ever knew he was now a planet-wide celebrity in a far distant future he never could've imagined?
We need to remember that the list of his illnesses and injuries may give us a false view, as we get it all in one listing, while he was at it for years.
What i mean, is, think about yourself and what would such scan show about your body.
For me, 29yo male it owuld show
-2-4 broken fingers
-One of nuckles was split in half
-Cut wound on head
-most likely some dental issues, one tooth missing and replaced with a prosthethic one (including cut bone to fit it)
-At least one cracked rib
-Most likely something wrong with gastric tract (everyone has something wrong with it)
-Trace of at least 3 long and hard illnesses
-missing hair (i am bald)
-countless scars on hands, legs etc. Currently one missing fingernail
When you see list like this, your first thought is "get this man to a hospital!". Meanwhile there is a 100 kilo guy who lifts weights. Most of those injuries happened either at a young age or during work/hobby activities along years.
God damn, Ötzie was so damn tough, I don't know who he was as a person, but seeing what he was like, I absolutely can respect him for just his sheer toughness
Most people in those days were probably just as tough as he was - they all lived hard lives. To us he sounds really tough and hardy, but to them he was probably no tougher than anyone else.
@@DG-iw3yw Back when survival was a human's foremost priority, yes, they were all much tougher than we are now. This random old dude was built like an olympian. There are studies that suggest ancient humans had larger brains, and that ours have shrunk over time due to not needing the extra acuity just to survive another day.
If you did know who he was as a person would it matter? Would you judge him, for instance, if he was oppressive to women?
@@ForbiddenFollyFollower that would make him extremely based
Yes I agree
this is one of the most amazing documentaries about Otzi i've seen!!
didn't even realized it was almost 45min long, i was so captivated by the narration and care given to the info provided.
Me personally being from Mexico, i wonder what amazing stories of my ancestors have been lost because forests and jungles don't preserve their remains, and because of the intervention of Conquistadors
Also, because you are Mexican, you are also probably of Spanish ancestry as well, meaning you have ancestors from Southern Europe, who have high amounts of Neolithic ancestry, making you especially related to Ötzie
You can learn a lot for old bodies , I've been digging up bodies from my local cemetery in Indianapolis for yrs. It very fascinating!
@@nickkerr8775 hell yeah man, gotta have that Ed Gein grindset
It's awful how much culture the Conquistadors destroyed. It makes me sad and angry whenever I read about it.
avatar2350,
A good try but there were no Conquistadors 5,000 years ago. And no Alps in Mexico. Also , as you say , forests and jungles do not preserve things very well . Dry deserts, maybe , if a body was very quickly buried in hot dry sand. Not to forget that even Conquistadors are historical.
It's really a special talent to make an entire 40 minute documentary and make it feel like 5 minutes
That is a great point about how debilitating his medical issues really were. Things we would find horribly painful might be barely noticeable to a pre modern man who's had the issue for years. I'd hate to find out how many things are wrong with me after the best medical teams spend millions testing me
'Round where I live, the local traditions in the eastern American woodlands would call the loose frays of Otzi's cape "fringe". It's used mainly for wicking moisture away from the main body so as to dry quicker (remember Otzi was surrounded by ice and probably subject to a lot of wet stuff lol). Also our local ancestors say Fringe looked nice too lol.
Yes! I fringed the cloak I wear in winter, because it does help wick away sleet and moisture. And it does look great!
@zxy atiywariii Otzi apparently had good taste lol.
Very uh cool bit of info
@@stompthedragon4010 Yee sure is!
Roofs are sometimes designed like that, so if it was a cape, the grassy fringe would make sense.
This is incredibly interesting and I get the appeal of why so many people get hooked on the mystery of his death. Every single detail is a rabbit hole about so many interesting facts of world he lived in and how lived his life. I'm astonished they can even tell that he'd been going up and down the mountain before dying.
I absolutely agree with you that if we were to get DNA tested and have our every nook and craky scanned, some serious stuff would come up. Hell, I'm a healthy 28 year old whose never broken a bone in my life and I'm pretty sure that if they did all those tests to me, they'd find out a long list of maladies. Otzi lived into his 40's in an era where the most advanced thing was herbal knowledge and we were still not entirely on top of the food chain. Gotta respect that, no matter what.
Your narrationn was amazing! Keep up the great work!
Otzi has to be one of the greatest archeological finds in history
The loose fringe of the grass cape is for better wicking and dripping properties, this is what "fringes" do. Thank you Dan for the interpretation of the white stone with the additional twisted leather lengths in a loop as a fastener kit. I wrote in a similar interpretation (with a diagram of how the stone makes that end easily belt fastened) to the museum staff ( in a video they actually asked what people thought that was for) that described the usefulness of being able to grab off a tie strip from the belt dispenser while holding a branch connection point to be lashed during construction, or the tying shut a series of bags, holding the tops closed while whipping off a tie strip from the set hanging from the loop with the stone being the around the belt "button" fasteners. This is much the same as available ties you described for tying up hunted fowl. Highest Regards!
The most interesting, thoughtful, & informed comment I've seen so far.
Absolutely, plus a bit of bug protection
@@alysononoahu8702 Yes, I great it, an instant feather duster style fly swatter!
Crazy to think that for all of recorded history Ötzi was just lying up on that mountain side with all the events we learn about transpiring in the world around him, oblivious to his presence and importance.
I think we're incredibly lucky that the oldest natural mummy in Europe also has one of the most amazing stories. He could and probably should have lead an ordinary and unremarkable life before dead and discovery, but no you could almost make a movie about his last moments
Extremely well done. I have studied and watched many videos of Otzi and this is the best by far.
I am a Dentist and I hope and assume that the radiographs are actually his. Although blurry there are many notable observations including advanced periodontal disease and carious lesions and also he was missing his third molars (wisdom teeth).
More impressive is the amount of information gathered by these researchers. Finding this man is like finding a live time capsule.
@@Klaus293 Missing 3rd molars while not common still occurs even today. Other than having very advanced periodontal disease I cannot imagine having them removed with the instruments available then even if pain management was somehow available furthermore the evidence of their previous presence woud be seen in the mandible.
Um he's long dead. It isn't a living time capsule any more.
@@sylvesterpalermo937People back then were not whiners that needed a week's worth of percodan for a tooth removal. Having a bad tooth removed is such a relief it's worth the temporary discomfort. Amish people have their teeth pulled as children sometimes just to prevent problems and they just yank them out with pliers and no pain killers leaving broken roots and chunks of broken jawbone around the socket. It's sick but it happens all the time.
I could sit and listen to the story of otzi a million times and never get tired of it.
It's absolutely fascinating to learn about other hominids or prehistoric hominids.
Imagine otzi one of the few with a metal axe in his time. Anyways his case is one of a kind and very amazing. Just makes you wonder what else is out there.
Even though I grew up in Germany and know a lot about it and have been following this topic for years, this has been super fascinating and so well told!
Pleased to hear it, thank you.
We will never know why Otzi died. Either a younger, jealous clan member (hence the copper axe being left) or he simply slipped his pursuers and just died alone, on the mountain, far from the attack site. Whether they were "friendlies" or not is immaterial.
However he died, Otzi certainly gave us plenty to talk about and I love the movie made about him- despite the lack of dialogue it is a riveting tale that I thoroughly enjoyed. Excellent video, Dan, thanks for all your hard work!
Maybe a spirit box communicators can contact otzi for an interview ☺️
Thank you. I remember when he was found in 1991. He feels like the past of us all in Europe. He takes us right back in such an emotional way to those days.
I've been obsessed with this story since it first Came out. I bet the world he lived in was beautiful in ways we will never understand. I wish we knew more. Like where's the guy that shot him? There's soooo much we don't know
Love the way you change the character of Ötzi by changing the hairdo and jawline ;-)
Helps us see how easy it is to get drawn into the artist's preconceived ideas.
Thank you.
The grass cape was probably used as a windbreaker and mattress , he probably carried over his shoulder as it was easier to carry it
Finally some decent length documentary on Ötzi! Thank you for the information, was really looking for such a video
A bit late to the party, but just wanted to say - this is a really good, thorough, well-balanced, well-illustrated overview / update. Like a lot of people I’d heard dribs and drabs as they came out over the years, but this pulls it all together in a comprehensive and comprehensible way. Thanks!
The reason the axe was left behind and not taken by the killer was because you don't kill a man then take his axe ,
Because I'm guesting everyone knew everyone and its a pretty quick was to get caught red handed
I was totally absorbed in the show from the first moment till the end. You provided so many really fascinating details that i have never heard before in all the years since the discovery of Otzi. The whole thing is very high quality. I'm looking forward to watching your other work!
Amazing work! I remember the absolute astonishment in Europe when Otzi was found! It left a wonderful spark in my 7-year-old mind about the ancient world and how little we know.
Keep on doing what you do, good sir!
For someone with a 7 year old mind, you have a fantastic vocabulary and very good writing skills.
I did three different DNA studies. 2 of the 3 said I’m related to Otzi. I found that fascinating.
Huh...parently you'd be related to my baby daddy then....
....😒 🤔 😒.... not that it matters much...
The third one said your ancestors were idiots.
Same here!!
People will believe anything… 😂
No one has addressed the arrows without tips in the comments, so I feel a need to comment. Those arrows without tips were likely (possibly is a better term) blunt arrows used to hunt birds, particularly considering that he had a specific tool on the belt to carry hunted birds. An arrowhead would destroy too much meat on a bird, even modern hunter use blunt arrows to knock out birds/kill them with blunt impact as to preserve the meat. Modern arrows like this sometimes even have springloaded arms so that should the blunt edge start to penetrate too deeply it pushes the blunt head back as to not ruin the meat. Considering his bow, the blunt tip of the arrow likely was strong enough knock out or kill birds without penetration to preserve precious meat (even if his bow is powerful enough to penetrate with a blunt tip an experienced hunter would have knowledge of how far to draw the bow to adjust the force).
Reasonably the arrows with tips were reserved for larger prey or foes. Not knowing better I don't think its unreasonable to believe that the arrowheads were intentionally left on mended arrows. If a human tried to pull out the arrow, possibly the shaft would have broken off so the tip stayed imbedded preventing easy removal, or for prey it would be more likely to break off and stay inside so the animal bleeds out rather than it being removed should the animal run past a tree or something that could dislodge the arrow.
Bless you for taking time to both learn and to share this great info 🤍
Viburnum
I admire & respect your clarity about what evidence shows, and how it changes interpretations over time with differing analyses applied to that evidence.
Amazing…. His story and your way of producing it! This must’ve taken a long time to create! So many details and pathways to explore!
Truly amazing video. Probably the best video on Ötzi I have seen.
Thank you very much.
Nice video! I remember hearing about Ötzi when I was a kid, and the popular depiction often made him out to be a primitive, 'caveman', not a member of a complex agricultural society that was already using metal. I'm finishing my Master's thesis on the Hill of Tara in Ireland, so I have been reading quite a bit about Europe from around this time.
I've loved archaeology and paleontology since I first learned to read, and findings like this truly are gifts to our knowledge base - and so is this video. 👍
His reconstruction confirms that he was an ancestor of Kris Kristoferson.
Good enough for me and Otzi McGee
Otzi was a Capricorn...hehe
Absolutely love it. Your channel is the best for Copper Age, bronze age. Thank you for putting this all together. I learn so much every time I watch your videos.
Thanks for watching mate. Glad you liked it.
@DanDavisHostory: SO appreciate your wide perspective, comprehensive look at prehistoric culture and the evidence we have for forming opinion. It so clearly demonstrate the dilemma of certitude when we have only limited knowledge. Thank you for publishing such excellent content.
Undoubtedly my favorite Otzi documentary online.
Think I've seen every one of the halfagozillion docs out there!
Excellent work brother.
I've always found Ötzi to be a fascinating topic, glad you got around to covering it!
Yes it is one of the most requested topics so I had to do it, really!
Just imagine all of the different events that happened all around the whole world, - and all through each and every one - Otzi was always lying right there, in that very same spot; a silent witness always right there,
somebody who was actually personally present through more than five thousand years of world history.
He was there while Italians and Austrians fought in the 1st World War right in that place!
Sometimes Alps glaciers still reveal some frozen soldier of WW1 preserved under the ice.
I suspect he probably became bored with it all after a while.
it'd be interesting to think that Hannibals men came across his body but had other more important matters to attend to.........
Now that you mentioned it, thats actually pretty cool. Hannibal crossing the Alps, Henry the IV going to Canossa, World War one with its Alpine Battlegrounds... And Ötzi was there, a silent witness to all these things. Amazing.
He was there before the pyramids were built.
One thing, I have speculated, is that the reason the highly prized copper axe was left, is that it could have been instantly recognizable as belonging to Ötzi. That if the man, or men who killed him returned with it, everyone would have immediately known what they did. So they had to leave it, no matter how valuable it might have been, to keep Ötzi's murder a secret.
Um, that theory has been around as almost as long as the ice man. There have been a million documentaries on this subject.
Yes, the Polizia di Stato would of arrested him and thrown him in prison. (sarcasm).
Just as telling, no hunter would of left behind his or somebody else's arrowheads, while they can make more, they were still time consuming to find the "right" chert and fashion more, that made them valuable. He very well may of been shot but was able to lose his attacker before he died. That his skin was so well preserved (no evident of rodent or insect damage) points that he wasn't dead for too many days before he was covered in snow. Snowstorms are very frequent at high altitudes. In some seasons they are almost a daily occurrence.
I’ve always thought the axe was the reason for his death. Either he was part of a trading mission taking the axe to or returning it from a neighbouring settlement or he was part of a raiding party attempting to steal the axe.
I like this theory 🙂
Perhaps but, it was so valuable and, rare l doubt that would discourage a murderer.
Excellent video! Otzi is an amazing window into ages past. I do have to say I increasingly lean towards the thought he was a hunter. His clothing is particularly built for alpine weather and potentially as a form of camoflauge. Considering that many Neolithic peoples wore woven cloth his more rugged, leather and fur based outfit definitely suggests some sort of specialized lifestyle. That said, we will never know for sure.
hello, thank you very much for your great documentary. I am from Austria and I remember well the time when Ötzi was found.
What was most surprising to most people was the place he was found in. There is a local legend(or several) telling about a hunter that commited some type of sacrileg(either killing and eating a holy animal, or hurting the bone of a holy animal). However he did something he was not suposed to do. Therefore A Salige Woman would punish him for doing so, which is why the arrow with which he killed the animal was flying into his own back(just like into the animals before) and he died and disapeared in a place called the backwards ice.
thats the animal Ötzi was eating and the place he was found in. The story was told centuries before Ötzi was found, I dont know how long you could trace it back. But the stories about the Saligen also tell that they are different people than "us" because they would not grow cereals, which is why you often could make them happy by a gift of bread....the Saligen live in higher altitutes and know much about animals(wild) and herbs(wild)...
It gave me goosebumps ...amazing
Very like the tales of the Great Flood- which are common to most societies and probably a reference to the melting ice at the end of the Ice Age.
Fascinating stuff. I swear the Alps is one of the most beautiful spots on earth. I visited the German and Austrian areas a few years back. Wish I could go again.
Really good video, interesting and informative and even presented in an entertaining fashion. Asking questions and posing answers rather than giving a dry lecture. Well done.
What I know about Ötzi at LEAST tripled from watching this video. Examining multiple possibilities and gauging their likelihood and how they've changed with the research tells a fascinating story -- even stressing the uncertainty of what's known about him paints him as more of a "person" than a "specimen". Really fires up the imagination and got me wondering how much of the sympathy I now feel for the guy is justified, or if he had it coming!
I could watch content about Ötzi all day. Endlessly fascinating. You did a great job with this. Thanks.
What drives me nuts about Otzi's story is not knowing if he's a hero or a villain... I wish some new evidence would be discovered that would shed some new light on the story...
This episode was excellent - thank you!
Considering the time of history, Otzi's belongings do not look like something an ordinary man would posses back in those days. Not just the copper axe, but his clothes and other items too. So he seems to be of a high social status, perhaps even a local tribe chief, and therefore likely to be killed in a tribal war. Also, it is possible that Otzi was accompanied by a friend, who pulled an arrow and then ran for help, but failed to return, because he himself was slain too/forced to retreat by superior enemy numbers/fell off a cliff, or maybe a sudden blizzard came burring Otzi's body and making it impossible to find him. That would explain why he left untouched. So many imaginable scenarios.
What baffles me is this: If we assume Ötzi was on his own and running/hiding in Terrain that he knew perfectly well, than tracking him down is next level. I don't think any humans nowadays are that familiar with the environment, truly amazing.
This is such a fascinating documentary. As a retired detective I would like to offer a very unscientific insight during the moments before his death, I say murder and here is why. He was shot at a high altitude maybe trying to escape up a mountain to fend off his pursuers using his muscles in his legs to carry him up the mountain. The author said his leg muscles were well developed suggesting he was a strong hiker up terrain at a high altitude that would be more difficult to breath unless one is acclimated to higher altitudes.
The shot placement was in the general area of his thorax. An excellent and intentional strike from an arrow on a moving target. I think a closer examination of the bow and arrow the victim carried would be in order. A replica of both then tested by a modern day expert in that style of weaponry could lead to information of how accurate one can be at varied distances given the amount of penetration of the arrow.
The fact the arrow was removed from the body shows purpose of trying to conceal who the assailant was. The making of an accurate arrow is as much of an art form as it is a skill. So the suspect would know that flint knapping and the shaft along with the feathering can be unique to a maker and the maker could tell who he made that arrow for. Leading village authorities to the perpetrator. I believe that organized communities would have rules during this time period. One wouldn’t be allowed to hunt a person down without cause I would think. And doing so would bear consequences.
The fact the victim had a copper axe and that copper axe wasn’t from that area and those things had commercial value suggest the perpetrator wasn’t motivated to stealing or knew that the axe would be traced to the victim . Either way the suspect didn’t seem interested to take it.
What we don’t know is if the victim had other things of value that the perpetrator wanted more than the victims axe, bow, arrow and clothing. The author said the victim was a “sharped dressed man” and that can create jealousy as we and I mean we who has seen the ZZ Top music video 1983. Or the victim had dinner in a near by community as a guest and spied the host daughter and kidnapped her and father wanted her back because she was promised to Zack and Zack was the man sent to hunt the victim down.Or the victim could have been married and she didn’t like him anymore and had a lover who killed the victim to steal the victims wife. I suggest these motives in this paragraph was thrown in for fun.
Again the author captured my intreats. And to Otzi, you may have not been well known in your time but now scientists and we history enthusiast are learning many more things from your time that is 5,000 years ago, wow how fantastic. But from this time forward you well not be forgotten. RIP.
He didn't die in the 2000, he died in the 3000s BC. There was no police. People lived in small family clans of several to several dozen individuals. As a family. There were no laws or authorities, just common sense on what is right or wrong.
There weren't even Authorities as such. They made major decisions as a group, rather than electing individuals to make decisions. There were leaders of course, but leading doesn't mean you get to unilaterally decide on things.
Thw killer also didn't bother pulling out the arrowhead, just the shaft. Meaning they didn't particularly try hiding anything.
@vitas75
How do you know that a tribal people didn't have societal rules and consequences for breaking them? That's probably the dumbest thing I've ever heard about humanity. Seriously...how do you think these people survived and lived together in groups without social rules and consequences? They just hugged it out? Jfc.
Every tribal people have them and have had them as far back as they've been writing things down and we can prove it. Tribes, all over the world, every single one in history, MUST have a social order and consequences for breaking those taboos or else they couldn't form social groups and keep each other alive and they'd have all killed each other off.
That's like Julius Ceasars saying that druids were sacrificing people practically every day...uh...if you're killing people all the time with no consequences, you're gonna run out of people pretty fast.
The man couldnt have been ill, weak and old.
He was found at 3000m. Most perfectly healthy young men can‘t walk up that far.
Im 45 and not particularly healthy, I hiked up a 3000m peak in August... Wasn't that hard. And there were plenty of older people there too.
Considering how arrows take time and material to manufacture it's common to keep your arrows as long as possible. I think removal from the body was an act of practicality rather than hiding evidence.
I have seen The Ice Man, Ötzi in Balsano Italy 2011. Amazing how he is kept in a Cold spray water fridge..LOVE to go on the Venice- Simplon someday ❤️
I've seen a LOT of videos on Otzi but none have tied it together as coherently and imaginatively. I hope 🤞🤞🤞🤞to teach an Anthropology course next year and this would be an excellent way to discuss the Neolithic/ Bronze Age transition as well as the breadth of information we can now access through the archaeological sciences.
Thank you very much.
Hope that you do. I'd only wish I could sit in on your class.
What a wonderful video this is. It is of the highest quality in terms of presentation and informative content that is similar, or better, than that made by much bigger organisations. Very well done Dan Davis.
Thank you 🙏
@@DanDavisHistory 👍 Good video, got yourself a new subscriber
According to 23 and me, I am genetically related to this man. How incredible is science?!? That I, in 2023, can learn about this ancestor of mine from so very long ago is absolutely amazing! Thank you for sharing this fascinating work!
I think people buried food in antiseptic sphagnum moss in holes in the ground or snow,so I think the moss fragments came from a food rapping of sphagnum moss not from his finger's.a good example is perfectly preserved gigantic ball's of cheese found in the irish bog's perfectly preserved after thousands of year's,the sphagnum moss,because of it's anti septic/antiviral properties it was commonly used as a wound dressing,but also as a food rapper
Yes indeed.
OH Id like to try some bog cheese...
Neolithic Charmin ie. Toilet paper. Cheap, abundant, antiseptic.👍
Cursed dare: eat the 3000 year-old bog cheese. *Do it*
Considering we know his hand was injured it makes far more sense he used it for his hand
Awesome subject, in my opinion, the finding of Otzi was one of the greatest events ever for the advancement of our understanding of copper age life, and the miraculous, pristine survival of his body and equipment are invaluable to historians.
i went to see otzi in the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology, it's truly amazing how much we have learned just from this one superbly well preserved guy. what would he think to know he's on display.
I'm so glad I found this channel. Always look forward to your uploads.
Thanks for watching.
I really love and appreciate the quality of your videos. They are my favorite when it comes to history.
Woven straw capes were widely worn by many cultures, especially in Asia. They were worn to keep one dry from the rain, or snow.
I had been pushing this a bit forward because of the length and my available time. It's an exquisite documentary that got me completely immersed in it. I love how you present the different theories going around and the description of the periode in a wider sense. I just know what I'm going to dream about tonight. Thank you very much.