The reconstruction of the last itinerary of “Ötzi”, the Neolithic Iceman, by pollen analyses from sequentially sampled gut extracts

Abstract

The investigations of the Tyrolean Iceman “Ötzi” and his artefacts, discovered at a remote location high in the Eastern Alps, have contributed greatly to the knowledge of the lifestyle of Neolithic humankind. However, the events immediately prior to the Iceman's death have remained unclear and even the recently discovered arrowhead in his back does not explain conclusively the cause of death satisfactorily. From the pollen and macrofossil content of his gut, we reconstruct his travels just before his demise. Sequential sampling of the food residues in the digestive tract of the 5200 year old glacier mummy has made possible the analyses of a series of meals and, from the pollen content, the deduction of the environments in which the last meals were eaten. During his last 33 or so hours, Ötzi crossed different habitats in the Ötztal mountains over considerable distances from high up near the timber line (at about 2500 m), to low down in the zone of warmth-loving trees (about 1200 m or less), and finally very high in the zone of perennial ice (above 3000 m). These final journeys lend new weight to the “disaster” theory of Ötzi's death, which suggests that, returning from the high alpine pastures to his native village, he came into a severe conflict with his kin such that he had to flee from the community back to the high ground familiar to him, where he died.