Ötzi the Iceman

In 1991 walkers in the Alps found a man who had died in the ice about 5,300 years ago. From his body, clothes and kit, scientists know his last meals, his illnesses, his tattoos, and that he was shot with an arrow.

Date: Died about 3230 BCIV · First cities and the Bronze Age
Place: Tisenjoch, Ötztal Alps · South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology, BolzanoEurope
Laid out as: A lifeOne person’s life, from birth to death, and what they left behind.
Lessons: 5 planned, none written yet
Themes: Medicine, health and disease
Technology and engineering
Crime, punishment and slavery
Society, family and daily life

The lessons we plan

Titles may change as they are written

IFound in the ice
IIHis clothes and his kit
IIIHis last meals
IVSixty-one tattoos
VWho killed Ötzi?

Still to come

The people and objects these lessons will cover

People

Erika Simon and Helmut Simon

Objects

His copper axe
His bow and quiver
His grass cape

Where it sits

All of human history, era by era

Early human ancestry Our species and the Old Stone Age Farming and the New Stone Age First cities and the Bronze Age The Iron Age and growing states The classical world After the empires Medieval networks and empires Oceans crossed Revolutions and the first factories Industry, empire and world war The world since 1945

3350 BC to 3230 BC. Each era is drawn the same width, so the earliest are squeezed: era II alone is over 300,000 years.

Nearby in time and place

This page is an outline. The summary above is a starting point; each lesson, when it is written, will give its sources, its pictures and where historians disagree. Spotted a mistake?