Ötzi: The Iceman of Bolzano

In September 1991, two German hikers found a dead body while walking through Europe’s Ötzal Alps. It turned out to be a perfectly preserved 5,000-year-old mummy.

The archaeologist Konrad Spindler inspected the body along with the assemblage of items recovered from the gravesite.

A person of this age had never been found before in such exceptional condition.

They’d lived during the transition between the stone and copper ages, and provided a snapshot into early human culture, medicine and genetics.

Hunter Charlton tells the story through archive interviews with the archaeologist Konrad Spindler and forensic pathologist Rainer Henn who were involved in recovering, analysing and preserving the mummy. An Ember production.

Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there. For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more. Recent episodes explore everything from the death of Adolf Hitler, the first spacewalk and the making of the movie Jaws, to celebrity tortoise Lonesome George, the Kobe earthquake and the invention of superglue. We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: Eva Peron – Argentina’s Evita; President Ronald Reagan and his famous ‘tear down this wall’ speech; Thomas Keneally on why he wrote Schindler’s List; and Jacques Derrida, France’s ‘rock star’ philosopher. You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the civil rights swimming protest; the disastrous D-Day rehearsal; and the death of one of the world’s oldest languages.

(Photo: The hikers with the mummy they discovered in September 1991. Credit:Paul Hanny/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)