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Otzi the Glacial Iceman

 

            Unfrozen is an article that discusses the Iceman named Otzi. Hikers discovered a body along with some Neolithic artifacts in glacial ice in Italy in 1991. The site was at an altitude of 10,500 feet in the Otztal Alps, which gave the body his nickname: Otzi. For the scientists to unlock the mystery of the famous iceman, they had to melt him. .
             In November of 2010 a scientist, Marco Samadelli, and a pathologist, Eduardo Egarter Vigl, along with other doctors and scientists did the unthinkable: defrost the Iceman. Once the body thawed the team frantically performed the first full-scale autopsy on a thawed body. They wanted and hoped to solve the mystery of the Iceman. They wanted to learn everything possible about him.
             Iceman had been under scientific scrutiny before. During the initial investigation, the Iceman received large cuts on his body in Austria. However, it was determined later that the rock where he was found was on the Italian side of the border. So he was relocated to Bolzano. .
             In Bolzano less invasive procedures were done, and the most astonishing revelation came in 2001 when a radiologist, Paul Gostner, noticed a detail that was overlooked. He noted that the Iceman had an arrowhead buried in his left shoulder, which meant that he was shot from behind. Later work by Gostner showed that the arrowhead pierced a major artery in the thoracic cavity, causing a hemorrhage that was almost immediately fatal.
             Other scientists were able to fill in the biographic details using chemical traces in his bones and pollen found on his body. They were even able to do DNA analysis of the food left in his stomach. Putting all the facts together the scientists were able to come up with a theory. They believed that the Iceman had a fight and a chase with the fatal outcome on the mountain, where his body was discovered more than 5,000 years later.
             In 2009 Gostner thought the theory fit the evidence until he took a closer look at the Iceman's guts.


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