In 1991, two hikers in the Ötztal Alps found a body sticking out of the melting ice and assumed it was a recent climber, but the corpse turned out to be a 5,300-year-old man with an arrowhead in his shoulder, 61 tattoos, and a 99.7%-pure copper axe whose metal was traced to southern Tuscany, revealing long-distance Copper Age connections

In 1991, two hikers in the Ötztal Alps found a body sticking out of the melting ice and assumed it was a recent climber, but the corpse turned out to be a 5,300-year-old man with an arrowhead in his shoulder, 61 tattoos, and a 99.7%-pure copper axe whose metal was traced to southern Tuscany, revealing long-distance Copper Age connections

On September 19, 1991, German hikers Erika and Helmut Simon were crossing the Ötztal Alps when they spotted a human body emerging from the ice near Tisenjoch, at about 3,210 meters above sea level. Only the upper body was visible. As the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology’s account of the discovery records, the Simons assumed they had found the victim of a recent mountaineering accident. Instead, the man had died in the Copper Age, more than 5,30…