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The Murder Mystery of Ötzi the Iceman · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Cuckoo Seattle. We're coming to see you. Yes, and your
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: little horn announcement is one of my favorite things that
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: you do because I know it means we're going to
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: do a live show, and in this case, we're going
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: to the great state of Washington, the greatest city in
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: the United States, Seattle, at the greatest theater in the world.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: The more the more we're going back. It's like our
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: home away from home in Seattle. We're going to be
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: there Thursday, January, and tickets are already on sale and
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: they're going like like uh Washington hotcakes, which is fast. Yeah,
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: they're going like chew car cherries. And you know what,
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: you want to save the few bucks, I think you
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: can even go to the box office there buy them
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: without those internet fees. Yes, Or if you don't care
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: and you just want to buy them on the internet,
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: you can go to s y s K live dot
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: com and follow the links there and it will take
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: you right to the beautiful ticket site. And also, f
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: y I, if you go to buy tickets in person,
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: you want to go to the box office of the
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Paramount Theater downtown, not the more the Paramount. We'll see
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: you guys in January. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know,
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. There's Chuck, and
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: there's guest producer Josh over there, which makes this Stuff
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: you Should Know all inclusive, and guest ghost host Chuck.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: Are you a ghost? Now? Did you die? No? I
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: just thought if there was two josh is in here,
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: I feel a little left out. Oh I see and
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: ganged up on. Yeah, I just I had no clever
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: way to say it. Ghost host, You're right about that.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: My mouth is working today, my brain, that's all right.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: It's been a long week already. It's only Tuesday, really, right,
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: is it just me? No, it's been a long week.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: I mean today's like I know, I don't want to complain.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: Never mind, everything's great. Hey, let me ask you something.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: Does OATSI have a noom loud or not? Yes, it's
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: it's okay. It rhymes with tutsie. I saw someone put it.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: I think are good friends at Smithsonian Magazine. It's there's
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: a bit of an R in there. Yeah. I like,
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: let's see alright, like Tutsie roll the dead Mummy. Let's see.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: This is a good one. This is exciting. I've been
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: wanting to do one on this one too. I had to.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: But in what spurned spurned or spurred? Spurned is where
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: you say get away and spurs like go ahead? Okay, nice,
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah that makes sense because you're using your spurs spurred. Sure,
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: I'm sure that's where that comes from. Surely, Okay, we
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: chuck just blew my mind? Uh what spurred this was there?
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: Let's see made some news recently because they managed to
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: trace his last like day and a half, really like
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: in the past few days even, Yeah, and about fifty
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: three years ago. He had the same thoughts that we
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: had when we started this podcast. He's like, it's only
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: Tuesday and this has been a long night already, a long, deadly,
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: bloody week. Yeah. I've been interested in this since I
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: saw the facial reconstruction photos. I was like, let's he
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: was Jack Palance Chris Christofferson? Is that? Okay dude? A
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: little bit of both. No, It's like they said, Mr Christofferson,
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: please come in so we can. Well, now that I
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: think about it, Christofferson and Jack Palance are have some similarities.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: If you put a beard on Jack Palance, really yeah, sure,
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: squinty eyes. Yeah, I guess sound this sh face. Yeah,
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: I guess you could see both. Christofferson, Man, what a legend. Remember, yeah,
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: look there's Chris Christofferson kidding. That's let's see. Yeah, I
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: mean it's me and Bobby McGee right there. Exactly did
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: you see that Ken Burns documentary? Now I didn't not yet.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: You haven't yet. Still No, I went to buy it
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: the other day and I just have not yet. So good.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: He's gonna buy that stuff, right, yeah, all right. I
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: just didn't know if there was a work around and
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: you're like, oh, no, dude, here's what you do. Um,
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'll buy it. It's like t Bucks. Oh wow,
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: PBS gives it away for free. What do you got
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: some PBS connection? No, it was on PBS for a while.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: Oh do you have cable or something? See, I don't
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: have I don't even think you have to have cable.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: Oh you mean like, um, like you just stream? Yes,
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: you're you're up the creek. I thought you meant, now,
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: you don't have to have cable to get PBS. You
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: just like help people in the world and just beams
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: under your eyelids. You know what I was thinking? You
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: have to stand there and hold like a coat hanger
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: a certain way in your TV. In the other hand,
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: you can get PBS. I'm gonna buy it though it
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: looks great, why not? It is good, and I would
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: say I would, I would say it's worth roughly sixty
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: it's pretty good. But anyway, Chris christoffers and figures big
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: into one of the episode like it's not worth more
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: than forty five, go ahead and pay right because it
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: goes to Kim Burns hairdresser. That's right, and that's a
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: quite a collection of brushes that person has to maintain.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: But Chris Christofferson has interviewed like today and thing he
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: looks exactly like let's see now. Well, I try to
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: get him on movie Crush because he played the City Winery,
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: which is like attached to our building basically, So I
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: will try and get people from over there on the
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: basis of like are you gonna do? Was walk over there?
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: Called the parking lot right his His manager emailed me
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: back and said, and this should hearten you as well,
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: said I'm actually it's stuff you should know. Fan the
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: manager and said, but you know what, um, he doesn't
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: really do interviews anymore. So maybe I just got the
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: the easy, the easy paths, but man, I really wanted
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: that one to come through to dude in this office.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: That would have been pretty special. But I'm no Kin Burns.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: No who is kin Burns? Yeah that's true. All right,
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: let's talk. Should we take a break, Let's go back,
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: chuck a little bit, let's get in the way back machine.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: It's been a little while. Okay, we're gonna go back,
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: and we even know exactly when we're going back to
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: one pm on September. Whoa one. I'm I'm in college.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: It's a salad days. I'm wearing a Flavor Flavor clock
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: around my neck. I was a sophomore in high school. Yeah,
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: that's all I have to say about that. I never
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: wore the Flavor Flavor clock. But trying to let that
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: be well, I should have. I was not cool enough,
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: but I was listening to Apocalypse. You know what I'm saying.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: You shouldn't have admitted that you didn't work, But no
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: one believe that. You know, I'm not that cool. You know.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: Aaron Cooper made a pretty awesome one of my favorite
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: ones of all time. It was us as Public Enemy,
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: and I think I'm flavor flavor in it. But you
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: look like Chuck D. And it's cool. It's a cool
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: photo shop of us. I tried to get Chuck D
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: on Movie Crushed too. Did he play the city Winery? No,
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: but he lives in Atlanta. I didn't know that and
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: at least part time, Boy did he say he did
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: say anything because the management company at email said we
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: don't manage him anymore. So it was just a dead end.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: I got you the Chuck the If you're listening Pont
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: City Market, let's come, let's talk about your favorite movie.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: Right and also shout out to Chris Christofferson's manager. That's right,
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: of course. Alright, boy, we're gonna have to go back
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: and ed it all this happened. No, it's one thirty
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: pm e septemb and we are hiking with Erica and
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: Helmut Simon there German. But we are hiking in the
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: oats all Alps in Italy. Yes, between Italy and Austria,
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: like right on the border, very close to the border.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: Um and on this peak the uh. The Simons decided
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: that as they were descending that they would take a
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: short cut, and the shortcut took him through this past
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: pastor crevasse and in this little shallow crevasse, they said, oh,
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: there's a there's a dead body. There's a corpse. And
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: you were like what I was because we were there too,
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: right yeah, And I said it's right time, boy, right exactly. Um, yeah,
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: that's great. So the thing is is they could they
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: could see it was I could ever like they could
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: see the corpses, back, back of the head, arm hanging out, um.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: And they just thought, well, we heard that there was
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: a hiker that was recently killed, and that's probably who
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: that is. We'll take a couple of pictures and go
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: down and tell somebody who owns like the nearest lodge.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: And on the way down, you and I are going like,
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: that was not a hiker that was recently killed. Even
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: I knew that, Like, did you see that guy? He
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: was super old. He was a mummy. The Simons are crazy,
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: and the Simon's were not crazy, but I'm sure they
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: were saying the same thing. They were just out of
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: your shot, right. So they they some people went up
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: and I think within a day or two they went
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: up to try to get this dead hiker who they
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: thought was a dead hiker out and they did a
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: terrible job with it. They used ski poles to chip
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: away at the ice. They used an ice hammer to
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: chip away at the ice. Um damaged the body. But
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: they think, well, it's just like some hiker or whatever.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: It will be fine. Put him in a wooden cast
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: it um. And this article makes it sound like he
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: like the whole world or everybody who knew about this body.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: I just thought it was a modern hiker for you know,
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: a while, until the body came down the mountains. That's
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: not the case. One of the things that when they
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: were getting this body out the accidentally excavated was a
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: copper headed axe, and word got out that there was
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: an axe with this body, and that is really weird
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: copper with like a wooden shaft and everything was clearly
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: a very very very old um axe. And so pretty
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: quickly they realized that they were onto something here for sure.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: And what they found out was this body hi frozen body.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: One of my favorite Simpsons lines ever five thousand years old.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: That's the same like, same little bit as he goes
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: moon pie a not a Abes buddy. What's his name?
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: Oh man, it will become me later, I'll say it.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: People are screaming. I can picture him now, Oh what
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: is it? I want to say, like Chauncey or Chalmers?
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: Is not that very similar to that? Honestly? All right,
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna keep going. So they get this body out
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: and UM removed it on September, sealed it up, like
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: you said, flew it out of town in a wooden
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: coffin to Ennsbruck, the Institute of Forensic Medicine. And there
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: was an archaeologist named Conrad Spindler there who said, uh,
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: this body is at least four thousand years old, at
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: the very least. What's abes friends name, Jasper Beard? Of course,
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: so they nicknamed the Utsi because of the region of
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: the all Alps. Very cute little name it is. Other
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: people call him frozen Fritz. Really yeah, I like, let's
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: see way more so. Um. In pretty short order they
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: realized that what they had just excavated in the roughest
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: possible manner and accidentally come upon was the corpse of
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: a fifty three hundred year old body. Yes, And when
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: I said the guy said it was four thousand years old?
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: He he said that was the initial Like he's at
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: least this old, right, But it turns out that after
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: further study, they figured out he was actually fifty years
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: old and that he lived in the Copper Age, which
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: was a relatively brief period in human history, but a
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: really important one um between the Neolithic Age at the
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: end of the Neolithic Age when the first farmers started
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: to appear, and the Bronze Age, when the first what
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: we consider society and civilization in history began. And we
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: know very little about this, and what hikers had discovered
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: was a snapshot of life during that time because let's see,
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: appeared to have just died where he fell where he died,
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: or died where he fell. Yeah, it was almost there
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: um and leaving his his belongings with him, and it
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: wasn't he wasn't like a great revered figure. He wasn't buried,
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: he wasn't prepared. He was kept intact for fifty years
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: on this glacier. Yeah, that was the biggest deal because
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: they have mummies, and they have older mummies, but like
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: you said, it's their organs are removed. They're filled with
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: you know, embalming chemicals and things they used at the
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: time for preservation for the afterlife and all this. So
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: this was a really big deal. To find this body
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: just really really scarily well preserved. And when we say
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: well preserved, it doesn't look like Chris Christofferson but not anymore.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: The organs were there and like didn't the red blood
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: cells have still intact. Yeah, it's the oldest intact blood
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: sample ever taken. Um Let's sees was so and the
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: fact that he wasn't buried provides a snapshot. It wasn't ritualized.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: It was this guy was just living his life and
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: he died and happened to be preserved perfectly. So his
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: belongings were preserved along with them and things that are
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: organic and typically typically um decay long before years comes
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: and goes. So his clothing made of like different types
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: of leather was preserved. His his coat or cape made
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: of woven grasses was preserved. It was a really cool
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: when you look at the shoes and the bear skin
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: had and bear skin hat was another one. His tool
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: kit was preserved. All of the stuff that we had
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: like like just kind of little hints and traces and
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: glimpses of from different like burial cashes or just happened
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: to find some artifact or whatever. This was like a
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: straight up polaroid picture of life in the Coppers. Yeah,
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: it was almost like someone stumbled upon a Museum of
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: Natural History display, but it was real, right, you know,
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: well put chuck. You know who would have loved that analogy?
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: Chris Christophers. It's not gonna say either Jasper or Arty.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: And I don't mean would have in the fact that
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: he's dead, I mean would have had he heard it.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: I agree, he's never going to hear this. You never know.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: I'm like using reverse. They called his manager right now,
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: Well do you might as well. Willie Nelson will never
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: listen to these either, neither World Dolly Parton. We want
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: all the country legends listening. Ronnie millsap will never hear this.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: Was okay, not with us though, because he doesn't listen
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: to stuff you should know and never will. So apparently
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: where where Artsy actually fell was pretty lucky because it
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: was in a very shallow crevasse and the fact that
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: that was uh kind of walled up on both sides
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: of him kept him. If he was just out in
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: the open, the freeze thought cycle over the years would
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: have washed everything away and ripped him apart. And uh,
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: it didn't happen because he kind of fell in this
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: crevasse um, all five ft two hundred and thirty four
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: pounds of him, which is a hundred and fifty eight
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: centimeters And that's right. He had brown eyes. Apparently at
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: five two was even a little short for the time,
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: but he was ripped. Yeah, he was pretty sturdy, uh,
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: you know, in his mid forties, like we said, and
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: really strong legs. And you know, kind of the fun
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: thing about this is the archaeological forensics of trying to
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: piece together like what was he doing, how did he die? What?
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: We'll get to all that, but just the fact that,
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: like he had big legs. They were like this guy,
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: he's probably go hurder. He's walking up and down these
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: mountains all the time. Look at those calves. He looked
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: like that guy from that one Liberty Mutual commercial. I
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: don't know, what do you mean, It doesn't matter, like
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: ten people this laft. What else did he had? He
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: had a dagger, he had that axe you're talking about.
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: The dagger, had a wicker sheath, he had um a backpack.
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: He had a leather pouch. Yeah. The backpack, by the way,
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: we'll never know how it worked because it got destroyed
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: by the people who went and dug him out of
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: the ice. He had some rudimentary snowshoes. He had a belt.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: He had had a belt that matched his cape, right, yeah,
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: oh man, and we'll talk about that. But apparently they
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: think that was on purpose. Yes, that he was a
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: bit of a fashionista. Um. He had a couple of
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: like vessels that were lined with um maple leaves that
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: he used to carry embers from place to place so
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: he wouldn't have to start a fire again. And all
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: the stuff. You're like, I'm cool a flint dagger, cool
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: copper x oh some members, Yeah, I do too. But
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: I can see people out there being like, uh, talk
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: about math or something. Right. The thing is is like
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: all this stuff that seems kind of boring and superficial
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: has been so thoroughly study that it's actually been used
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: to paint a larger picture. Like we understand the copper
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: age in Europe way better than we did before he
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: was discovered just from finding this, the few things that
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: he died with and him himself. He also interestingly had
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: sixty one tattoos all over his body. I've been waiting
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: for this day. What you said tattoos correctly? Oh, you
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: mean the tattoos, so uh yeah, and they were they
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: covered him from head to toe in different parts, and
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: they didn't use needles back then obviously, but they would
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: rub or cut the skin open and then rub charcoal inside,
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: and they're all They mapped him out in two thousand
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: fifteen and organized them into nineteen groups, and they are basically,
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: you know, like maybe three identical lines, short lines like
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: an inch long, or like a cross, not a spiritual
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: religious cross, but you know, like a plus sign, yeah,
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: or like a Chinese character that has some inspirational association
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: perseverance or something had a lower back tattoo of a
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: thorny branch um. But yeah, they map these all out,
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: and for a while they thought, and some people still think,
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: because they were largely found around the joints and along
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: his back um, and he had back problems, and they
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: he basically was marked up where he hurt, it looks like,
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: and they thought it might have been either acuput puncture
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: points to mark or it might have been the acupuncture
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: treatment itself, right, but it does. They do think that
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: it had something to do with acupuncture, which in and
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: of itself was a big revelation because they thought up
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: to that point that acupuncture had been invented two thousand
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: years after, let see, and way further eastern in Asia, right,
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: But now they think that may not have been the
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: case because they found um a new cluster of tattoos
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: on his chest that they didn't formally recognize, and they
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: were like, there are no acupuncture points there, and he
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: didn't have any injuries there. So now they're they didn't
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: throw it out with the bathwater. But there are people
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: now they're saying like, we don't know if that's true
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: or not. No, Okay, so I'm really glad you said that.
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: Everything that we know about Letsie, aside from the fact
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: that he is dead, that we have a pretty good
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: idea of when he lived, probably was height, weight, was
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: stuff like that. Everything else is interpretation. So you have
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: to remember that interpretation super educated and usually UM displaying
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: the current understanding of history or interpretation of history or events,
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: but um, it is still interpretation. That's part of archaeology
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: and anthropology and history, especially when you're talking about prehistory.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: This is he lived during a time before anybody wrote
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: anything down or recorded anything, which makes it prehistoric. But
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: you just bear that in mind that everything we're talking about,
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: and every a thing you go read about OTSI is
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: very much described in absolute terms, but it is our
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: picture and image of him. How he lived, how he
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: died has really shaped and shifted over the years since
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: he was discovered, and it still is. It's still malleable.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: Nothing is definitive. Nothing said in ice. All right, let's
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: take a break. It was a bad joke. We'll talk
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: about Urtsey's health, right for this. Was he healthy? I
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: mean he was. No. He was a person of age
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: in his mid forties of a time where at that
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: age he's going to be pretty beat up. Yeah, he
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: wasn't unhealthy and like the modern sense where he's like
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: deliberately wrecking his health because he's eating too much junk
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: food or something like you know me. Yeah, but he
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: was unhealthy in the way that a person would be
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: unhealthy from living close to the land at a time
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: before medicine had really developed. Yeah, exactly, no doctors, no dentists.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: So as you would imagine, he had gum disease, heart disease,
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: lime disease, gallbladder stones, hardened arteries, gall stones. Yeah, the
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: disorders so nice, we named it twice, right, He had
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: a whipworm parasite in his gut. He had h pylori
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: in his gut um. And all of this is to say,
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: like you said, he was probably a pretty normal dude
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: of mid forties of the time. Uh, he was. They
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: couldn't find his stomach for a long time. It's amazing
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: how much of the stuff like it was found over
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: the years, Like this tattoo. This new tattoo was just
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: found a few years ago after like many many years
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: of study. His birthmark that looks like Abraham Lincoln eluded
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: people for decades, but they couldn't even find his stomach
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: and they found it, like, oh, here it is twenty
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: years later. They found it wedged up between his ribs
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: and his lungs. Yeah. Then they found it because they
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: noticed tia gall stones. So they basically traced a path
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: from the gall bladder to the stomach and said, there
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: it is. We found it. And they were really happy
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: they found it because when they started dissected or take
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: samples from it, they found that it was full. Yeah.
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: He died like within an hour or so of eating
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: his last meal and hadn't digested it. He had food
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: in his in his colon. Uh, he had food and
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: his intestines. He had a turtle head peeking out. That's awesome.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: What his last meal was dried ibex and deer meat
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: with ink horn wheat, Yes, and slow plums. I don't
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: know why that wasn't mentioned. Can get that same meal
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: in served you by a guy with a waxed mustache
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: and like some sort of arm band, an armed guard. So, yeah,
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: an armed guarter. That's that's it, isn't it. Yeah, that's it.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: Um So he they think some sort of like fatty
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: cured meat, kind of like a bacon cured bacon today.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: And the iron iron i corn wheat was from bread.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: And he also ate slow plums. Got okay, slow plums Yeah,
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: that they make slow gin from. Oh really, which I've
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: never had, have you? That's s l o e right
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: yeah right. It's like it's supposedly a very tart, kind
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: of bitterish plum, but it was it's like load of vitamins.
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: I've never had it. I remember it seemed like an
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: old person drink was a slow gin fizz, like an
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: old person who's like a hundred fifty year olds old. Yes.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: When when I lived in Arizona, there were all the
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: snowbirds are down there. They drink like slow gin fizz. Really,
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: I've never been present when somebody ordered a slow gim fizz. Yeah,
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: I would like to try one. Sure, try one. Okay, Josh,
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: get a couple of slogan fizzics. Make it a double.
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: I guarantee. There's a bar in this dumb building that
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: has lgent businessman. Sure, you know, with armed guards. Um,
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: can I keep? The armed guard comes with the drink.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: So let's talk a little bit more about the copper Age.
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: I guess um he had, well, what we'll save his
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: injuries for a minute. Here, we'll talk a bit a
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: little about his lifestyle in the copper Age. Like you said,
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: he was, as demonstrated by his meals, he lived a
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: pretty like farming pleasant life down there, it seems like,
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: but not one without conflict, you know. Sure based on
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: his meals, well, based on his meals, he lived a
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: farming type lifestyle. But based on injuries we're going to
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: talk about it seems like that, you know, he he
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: had some enemies. So from from what I saw, and
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: I mean we used a lot of different articles, but
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: National Geographic is very well represented. And here live science
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: history dot Com the BBC. I came across something from
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: the Pen Pennsylvania, the Penn Museum or U Penn Museum.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: I think they have a magazine called Expedition that was
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: pretty awesome. It had a pretty great thing, And I
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: saw a couple of things from um historians that wrote
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: up basically descriptions of let's see and thought co which
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: is this is a surprising great resource. Yeah have you
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: ever noticed Yes, yeah, so um in In one of these,
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: I saw that it was kind of put like he
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: he lived as a farmer and enjoyed like the fruits
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: of village life too, so things like cheese and processed
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: grains and cereals, so bread and stuff like that, and
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: the um the idea is that he didn't know how
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: to bake bread or make cheese. He he was part
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: of a villager or society where somebody knew how to
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: bake bread and somebody knew how to make changes, so
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: the professions were starting to emerge. But that he also
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: was pastoral and that like he he herded sheep and
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: that's probably what he did most of it most of
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: the time. And then he also lived very close to
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: the earth the land as well, like his last meal
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: was wild game ibex and deer and slow plums that
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: he probably plucked himself. So he was kind of like
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: this transitional human from from the hunter gatherer passed into
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: the agrarian, agriculture based future that spread out just ahead
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: of him. Yeah, Like just ahead of him were like
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: real deal Italians out there, bacon baguetts, well that's French, Yeah,
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: what I mean Italian bread? Yeah, yeah, in Italy they
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: just call it bread, that's right. Uh. They I mentioned
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: earlier that his clothes matched and they do think, and
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: of course again this is all speculation, but these garments
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: were pretty refined, even when you look at him now,
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: like he had these fur skin leggings that were held
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: up by spenders by Alexander McQueen. Oh man, I wouldn't
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: saw that. I know. That was amazing. So good. Um,
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: and a great documentary on him too, that's good and sad. Uh.
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: The they talk about the color of the animal skin, Zoe,
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: the contrasting colors, they think, we're actually matched, like elaborately,
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: and he had, like, like you said, a sense of style,
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: like you know, is that possible? Yeah, But I mean
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: it seems like a lot to extrapolate that his coat
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: and his belt matched, and so they were like, hey,
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: he had a real personal identity, whereas in it could
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: have been just like that's the materials that he had
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: on hand that fit. That's possible. But I think what
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: they're what they would assert is that um, it has
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: enough panache that the chances of it just being random
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: are very unlikely or less likely than it being you know,
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: asserting his sense of fashion and well and he was Italian,
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: that's right, So you know, Italians and their fashion go
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: hand in hand. Everyone who's been to Millino knows that.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: Or Fenze. Remember when I was touring Europe as a youth,
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: my friend and I laughing at the Italian guys and
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: the hostels were like the nineteen year old dudes were
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: so put together and like would spend so much time
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: in the mirror wearing the cologne and getting their hair
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: just perfect, and we were just disgusting humans. And they
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: got the girls. So it turns out that they were
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: onto something a little bit of extraffer really does and
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: the big hair. Yeah, they were great guys. So we
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: met some cool Italian dudes. One of the other things too, though,
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: that the fact that he clearly was involved in a village.
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: They think that he was associated with a particular village
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: to the south, in a valley near you know, the mountains. Um.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: It was things like bread and cheese that they think
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: they found in his body. Um, but also the fact
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: that he did not he obviously didn't know how to
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: make his own tools. Somebody else had. Um. He probably
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: did not know how to weave the cape he was wearing.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: Somebody else had done that. Yeah, they're all they all
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: had their specialties that. Yeah, the tattoos, he couldn't have
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: put some of them on his own body. He probably
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: went to see a medical practition or to do that. So, Yeah,
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: this is at a point when specialists and and specialized
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: professions are starting to emerge. It's a really cool time. Yeah,
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: and this is these are the things that we've learned from,
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: you know, that we've gleaned from the stuff that we
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: found with him. I think it's just astoundingly fascinating. Yeah,
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: it's really cool. This is a really interesting period I
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: think of human development. It's also called, by the way, um,
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: the copper age or the chocolthic like copper age to
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: chalcolithic just kind of coughs out of the mouth in it. Yeah,
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: so let's talk a little bit about what might have
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: happened to see and how he found himself dead on
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: that mountain, because there quite a theories over the years,
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: and like you said, even this week they have some
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: more leads. But he was wounded. He had a really
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: bad wound on his right hand. They found out he
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: was right handed too, so this is a big deal
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: between his thumb and his forefinger there. That area went
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: all the way down to the bone. But it looked
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: like it had healed up a little bit. Um, So
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: it probably happened they said, within a few days of
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: when he died, but it was healing. But it was
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: a big injury, like we said, because he was right handed,
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: and um, but it's not the kind of thing that
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: that killed him, Like he didn't bleed out from that
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: or anything like that. No, So um, it makes you think,
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: well I did kill him then, right, Well, they think
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: that might have been from a fight. Perhaps that wound
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: that has been almost universally agreed upon from the outset
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: right that he probably didn't inflict that wound himself. That
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: it seems to have been a defensive wound. Right. There's
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: a guy named Alexander Horne, who is an inspector with
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: the Munich Police, and so we should give just a
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: little background for a second. When he was found, he
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: was taken into Germany down the mountain into Austria Innsbruck.
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: Austria and the Germans were heavily involved as well as
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: the Austrians and the Italians were less involved, and that's
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: where he kind of stayed for the first few years,
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: I think about a decade or less after he was discovered,
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: and then eventually it was transferred to Italy. The Italian side, yeah,
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: because they were like, he's a founder on our side. Yeah,
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: like just to barely I think. Also, I don't know
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: if this contributed to or if it came later, but
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: he does seem to have been linked to the Italian side,
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: where like you said, he was an Italian. So he
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: was transferred to Italy and when they when they took
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: custody of them man, they pulled out all the stops.
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: They put him up in Bolzano, Italy, near about I
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: think like thirty miles or something from where he was found. Uh.
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: They built a museum specifically for him, an institute built
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: around studying him, and they proceeded to study him more
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: than any other mummy has ever been studied, probably any
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: other body than has ever been studying in the history
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: of the world. Um and have just turned out paper
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: after paper after paper based on their findings from them.
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: Um so. But at first, some of the ideas that
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: we have about let's seeing what happened to him come
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: from the earliest interpretations posed by the Germans and the
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: Austrians when they had custody of its right, which weren't
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: necessarily right, as it turns out, no, but some may
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: have been. But my ultimate point was, everybody says from
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: the outset that the wound in his hand was a
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: defensive wound that came from close combat with somebody else.
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: That's right. For a while they thought there was an
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: Austrian archaeologist named Conrad Spindler that I mentioned earlier that
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: they sort of recreated the scene. And their contention early
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: on was like, man that acts is leaning up against
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: the rock, it's propped up there, like we think everything
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: is literally frozen in time from how it was is.
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: And I think that's one of the things that they've
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: later refuted, right, And they said that it looks like
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: things might have moved around something. Yeah, they think that
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: the um what would you call it, the site I
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: guess from the freeze thaw cycle just kind of distributed,
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: redistributed this stuff. Yeah, which you know, it's still all valid,
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: but it not necessarily it was not necessarily exactly as
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: it was at his moment of death. Um. They did
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: find his hat though, off of his head, as if
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: it just like kind of fell off of his head,
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: which might have been true. Right, So some of those
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: early stuff. They also found what they thought were fractured
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: ribs that had not healed. Right, So the earliest picture
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: was this like they treated it like this is a
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: dead body mystery. Where did this dead body come from?
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: How did he die? Yeah? But well quickly though, they
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: also found pollen in his gut that they thought came
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: from an autumn plant, So they were like, he died
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: in the fall, right. Okay, so that's the full setup
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: of the bad information. So the first idea, and I
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: think it was Spindler who came up with the disaster theory,
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: wasn't Conrad. Spindler said, Okay, here's what happened to Let's see,
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: he came down from the mountain, probably hurting some sheep
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: or goats, went down to his village, uh, and got
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: in an altercation with somebody cut his hand. You're looking
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: at my wife, right, that kind of thing. That's nice, um,
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: and he fled or oh and part part of the
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: altercation also resulted in some cracked ribs and either fled
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: or left escaped up the mountain again where he became
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: exhausted from his cracked ribs and his cut hand, and
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: uh he laid down or fell into this little shallow
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: crevasse and died of exposure to hypothermia. That was the
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: disaster theory. And that was that, you know, I mean
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: they had that for a few years, and somebody came
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: along and said, I don't think that's right. That's right, um,
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: because they found out some of the things, like the
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: site had melted some and then things were in different
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: positions they originally thought. Probably they examined the ribs again
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: and said they were actually not fractured before he died. Yeah,
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: that they were just a little bent. Yeah from like
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: after his death, probably from the push of ice, the
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: pressure from ice fusing on him again exactly. That'll that'll
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: crack your ribs in a second or bend your ribs.
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: The big one, though, was what they found in the
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: X ray in two thousand one, Right, you know what
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: they found? Should we take a break, all right, we'll
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: discover what they found right after this? What do they find, Chuck?
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: They found a freaking arrow head lodged in his shoulder,
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: back shoulder. That was a verbatim quote from the press conference.
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: This was a big deal. They missed it for ten years,
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: they missed the thing, and they found it. Uh yeah,
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: it was just a regular X ray And they said,
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: wait a minute, that looks denser than bone. What is that.
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: It's a triangle. It's a triangle. And it was a
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: thirteen millimeter gash along a major artery in his chest.
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: And they're like, he bled to death up there. Yeah,
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: they said, there's no way he would have survived. This
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: is unhealed. This this is finally what killed him. So
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: this disaster theory that he got in an altercation but
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: ultimately died of exposure hypothermia UM was replaced by the
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: murder theory, which is very similar, but there's some important
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: nuances in differences. One, so the cracked rib thing, just
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: throw that away. It was a red herring UM. But
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: the altercation is still the same. He comes down the mountain,
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: he gets in a fight of some sort, go back
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: up the mountain with his cut hand, and while he's
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: hanging out, maybe tending to his wound, maybe trying to
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: figure out what to do next. That's my arrow impression
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: message for you. So yeah, right in the back, in
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: the back. From a distance, they think due to the
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: penetration from the arrowhead from about thirty that is it
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: is a good shot. Because it was a kill shot
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: from thirty and fifty ft. That's a that's a ways, um.
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: I can't quite put it into an easy analogy, but
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: that's a long that's a long way. Um. And the
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: fact that it was in the back, he never saw
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: it coming and it would have killed him pretty quickly
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: was a punk move, is what it was. It was.
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: Here's the thing. Because his possessions were left intact um
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: and because he had that defensive wound, they think that
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: this was the result of his death, as murder was
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: the result of a personal conflict. There was no theft
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: involved or anything like that, because his copper acts alone
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: would have been pretty valuable at the time that somebody
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: would have taken it had they killed him for something
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: like robbery. Yeah, so this was a vendetta, yes, or
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: at least a personal fight that happened that day, yeah,
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: or maybe a long standing for you. There's no way
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: to tell here. Here we reached the point where the
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: historians and the archaeologists are like, we really can't say,
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: but here's some ideas for me. It's either the person
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: who he fought came back for revenge. I think, and
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: this is a total guest, but I was trained in history,
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: so I'm allowed to do this. He was trained in history, Yeah,
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: it was. I studied history in college. That's what they
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: call it. They're like, just how you do it? Train
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: history camp? Right? Um? He he was successful in that
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: hand to hand combat and killed the other person. Whether
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: it was offensive or defensive. I like to think it
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: was defensive. He didn't have a choice. Um. But the
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: person's family came back and killed him up on the mountain. Gotcha.
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: That's the current idea. Well, not that last part that
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: it was his family, but what I said leading up
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: to that, everything about that, um, everything else about that.
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: I'm really sorry, Chris Christopherson. Um, that's the current idea
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: of what happened. Let I think so you're not going
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: with my jealous lover theory. No, okay, no, I'm not
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: all right. I think it was a woman with that arrow.
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: You think the woman a woman shot him. Yeah, jealous lover.
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: I think he was stepping out and he was like
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: holding up his hands like baby, baby, it wouldn't me.
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: And she slices him with the her implement of choice
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: and then dices him with the arrow. And then he's like,
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: this is getting too serious. You're crazy, and so he
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: heads up the mountains and she's like, I'll show you crazy.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: She turns into close, she goes and forges an arrow,
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: and then in that time it took her to forage
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: that arrow from hardened molten you know, l flint hirt shirt.
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: He's up that hill a little bit and she's like,
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: no problem, watch this right in the back. I like
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: that one too. Alright. I'm going with family, family, because
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know the rule, can't trust family, trust family.
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: So um, speaking of that churt, uh, he did not
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: have um, he didn't have blanks. Yeah, so this is
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: evidence that he didn't know how to create his own tools.
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: Somebody applicate these tools, which apparently were sort of on
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: their last legs. Yeah, that was another thing too, So
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: he did not have what he needed. Like imagine if
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: you had um, if you had like a a tool
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: an no, a knife, okay, and it's made of flint,
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: and you use it over and over and over again,
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: it's gonna get worn down and eventually it's gonna get
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: so worn down that you just can't use it anymore.
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: This is essentially the state of his arrowheads and his
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: knife and some of his others, his stone tools in particular,
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: that he was not in a position to defend himself
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: with his own tools because he'd used them up. And
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: I wonder if the if he's not making these in
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: the village, if they're like ertsies, you know he's have
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: you guys noticed he's on the way out, Like, we're
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: not gonna be making any more tools for Ertsie. Yeah,
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: I can think we don't have many. He'll just make
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: do with what he's got, it said, but he owes
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: me money, So should we talk about moss. This was
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: astounding to me that this happened in the last few days,
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: because did you pick this out before this happened or
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: was it serendifically? This is what I saw that made
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: me say it's time, Okay, I got you. So researchers
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: found uh these moth spores uh that were inside of him,
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: that he had ingested and just on him and around him. Um,
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: seventy percent of the seventy five species of these mosses
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: and liverwarts were not local. And they basically said, there's
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: no way these would have been on the side of
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: the mountain if not for him, right like a bird
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: couldn't have transported it this far or something like that, like,
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: let's he brought these up here. And so in doing
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: that and in tracing like these mosses and spores and everything,
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: they have a big clue. They've been able to retrace
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: his steps that last basically thirty three hours of his life,
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: the last day and a half, and it was not
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: a great day and a half for him. He had
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: his hand wound. By now by the time we're coming
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: in here, he's already got his hand wound. Uh. It's
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: got to be smarting. And it's a real problem for
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: him too, because even if he could make tools, he
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: would have been really troubled to do anything because he
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: was right handed, and that's where his wound almost down
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: to the bone was was in his right hand, so
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: that's a big problem for him right there. Yeah, So
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: what they found in is lower colon, which is would
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: have been the last I'm sorry, the oldest stuff that
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: he had eaten that has not yet been the turtle
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: head not yet, not turtle headed yet or I guess
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: currently turtle headed. Um, we're pine and spruce pollen, so
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: they said, And it's kind of neat. That's what I
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: love about this, like historical forensics, like, oh, well, we
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: know what was in his body, and we know where
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: that stuff is. It's not at certain altitudes. It was
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: a high altitude for us around feet and they know
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: because of where it was in his body. This is
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: thirty three hours before he died. But the middle tractor
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: was colon. That's where all the secrets are. In the colon,
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: you know, had pollen from hop hornbeam and that's stuff
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: from lower altitudes. It's from lower altitude. But also it
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: grows only in the spring and summer. It decays very quickly,
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: so it's not something that you would preserve and keep
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: for the fall or the winter. Throw out the autumn theory.
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: So they say he definitely died in the summer, right
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: and I guess that means that he probably descended maybe
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: all the way to the bottom of the valley within
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: twelve hours, maybe nine to twelve hours of his death,
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: and then all the way back up again right where
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: he was found dead. And they figured all this out.
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: They retraced all this just from those spores and mosses.
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: They think, maybe so he he's down in the valley
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: to begin with, or in the village, gets that hand wound,
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: flees up to the tree line. Um, and then they think,
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: because he's like the little lady always needs a few
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: days to cool off, right, Oh, you're gonna get some
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: email for that one. Um. I retract my right by
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: the way. Uh so, and then he goes back down,
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: they think to get some mosses because they have anni
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: bacterial properties. Yeah, you can also raped meat in it
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: apparently too, I guess keep it or whatever. But also
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: they may he may have wrapped his hand in it
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: or something as well, or maybe maybe then he goes
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: back up to the tree too, above the tree line
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: where he dies at about ten feet along the way.
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: He had that last meal of I box and deer
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: and bread and slow plums. Pretty good meal, not bad.
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: I wonder if he was panicked, if he knew like,
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: I'm in a bad way because of this cut on
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: my hand, and my tools and arrowheads are not in
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: good shape. I don't know, because it's interesting you only
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: know that stuff from seeing it at that point in history,
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: Like it would have been like, boy, I've seen that
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: kind of wounded before on too, and he did not
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: last long. But if you thought somebody was coming after you,
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: and you knew that your arrowhead was useless and your
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: knife was like dull and you're your stab in hand
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: was cut to the bone, you probably wouldn't have had
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: to have seen that before to be like, uh, probably
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: so well, he was in full retreat from what it
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: looks like, right, Yeah, and that's why he was going
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: up that mountain. That's that's that's what most people guess. Yeah,
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: so he was probably scared, yeah, which is sad, But
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: that's how we spent this last day and a half
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: kind of on the run up and down the mountain,
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: which is pretty impressive that he was able to make.
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: You know, he went up and down the mountain. Don't
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: forget he was wearing moccas and stuff with grass and
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: he was old for the time and he had gingervitis. Uh.
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: Kind of a neat thing is they have found, um,
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: they found some weird markers on his male sex chromosomes
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: and they've actually traced some genetic relatives at least nineteen
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: people living today, Yeah in Austria, not married but related
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: to Yeah. Pretty neat. Yeah, I think so too. So check.
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: There's another theory that says, hey, you know, your whole
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: murder theory it's bs. Maybe the murder part is correct,
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: but he was murdered ritually. This is an a vendetta
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: or anything like that. Let's see was buried, right, they
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: think that this was a ritual burial on top of
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: a mountain. Um, but he you know, it's not the
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: kind of Maybe they just want a group that removed
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: the organs and did that stuff, right. Yeah, So the
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: premise of the burial theory, called the social theory, is
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: that he's not a snapshot of everyday life. That they
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: didn't that he would have been so heavily laden with
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: all of this stuff because we didn't even say he
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: he had a bow and arrow, over knife, a hatchet. Um,
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: he was wearing moccasins with grass and they're kind of
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: like seriously, that's the best they could do at this
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: time for the hiking a mountain. That's the shoes you wore, Like,
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: those aren't mountain hiking shoes at any point in history. Um.
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: And the fact that um, the shaft of the arrow
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: was removed, I think they point to is an example
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: of the idea that he was um buried, that he
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: was killed ritually and buried in this So they think
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: the killing was a ritual killing too, because sacrificial killing. Yeah, oh,
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: I didn't get that part. And the other thing is
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: they're saying, like this stuff, these fancy Alexander McQueen leggings
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: that he wore that were basically the predecessor of later hosen,
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: there's some pretty nice stuff for a simple like sheep
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: herd her is it to be wearing? That's what this
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: is what the social theory people are saying. They're they're like,
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: we think this guy was actually kind of important and
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: that he was buried here um as a sign a symbol.
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: And what they found or what they point to, is
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: that there's stella like monoliths that were carved in the
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: late coper Age a thousand or two thousand years after
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: Utsie because he was born at the beginning of the
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: coper age that our depictions of somebody dressed a lot
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: like Utsie and they think that these are like heroes
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: and legends, ancestors, and they're saying, this guy's wearing what
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: these people were carving images of a thousand years later,
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: maybe he was kind of important, and maybe this has
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: also had some ornamentation too, didn't he Yeah, like a
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: marble bead, which you know could mean something or could not.
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: But the fact that he had so much stuff with
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: him does kind of support the idea that maybe it
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: was a burial and then to send him into the
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: afterlife with all the things he would need exactly. And
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: then the other one is no one's ever explained how
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: he was so well preserved. That apparently being frozen by
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: ice doesn't doesn't cut it. Yeah, that that other people
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: have been found who died far later and we're in
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: way worse states of decay than as he was, but
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: they found no like chemical preservation evidence or anything. No,
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: And admittedly at both sides, if if either one of
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: them are being honest, they will say we don't know
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: how he was this well preserved. Quite a mystery still
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: to this day. As much as we know about him,
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: he is still a mystery. He's our love and mystery man.
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: That's right. If you want to know more about let's see.
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: Go type O t Z I and your favorite search
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: bar and it will bring up some fascinating stuff. And
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: since I said that son for listener man, I'm gonna
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: call this the Accidental iron Man. Hey, guys, a big
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: fan for a long time. I accidentally did my first
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: iron Man in July. And you might think, how in
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: the world would that happen? I was thinking exactly. Then
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: here's how that happens. I've been doing triathlons since two
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: thousand fifteen always planned on doing an iron Man at
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: one point or at some point, my plan was to
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: do a half iron manen do the full thing. In
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, I wanted to do the Iron Man like Placids,
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: since it's reasonably close and as a lake swim as
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: opposed to a river or in ocean swim. Um. That's
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: a hard race to get into, though, because it sells
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: out so fast. I got an email tell me registration
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: was open, and in my excitement I misread it and
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: thought it was for the half, so I signed up
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: and realized after the fact that it was the entire
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: hundred and forty point six race and not the seventy
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: point three Triathlons don't do refunds, so I paid my
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: eight hundred dollar plus entry fee and couldn't get it back.
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: I could have deferred for a year, but it's decided
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: just to go for it. And I finished the race
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: in fifteen hours, two minutes and forty three seconds. And
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: that is from John Patanyac and an email John back,
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: and it's like, you want to give me a couple
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: of little tidbits here for listener mail, and he said sure,
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: and he wrote back and he said, one thing I
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: can say is it really takes over your personal life.
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: At my peak, I was training twenty hours a week.
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: And he said that is literally just pool, bike or running.
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: He said, doesn't count travel to and from the gym,
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: cooking meals, prepping equipment. He said, it's literally like a
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: part time job. And he said the race was a
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: lot of fun. He said, the Lake Placid course goes
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: through the old Olympic structures from the nineteen Olympics, and uh,
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: you finish at the finish line and the speed skating
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: oval that's Nate. Yeah, it's pretty cool a sineficture. It's
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: like urban exploration iron right, uh, And he said. One
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: of the cool things they do if you're first timer,
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: as you wear an orange wristband, so all the volunteers
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: and crowd will give you extra support and it says
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: I will become one on it. And he said, it
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: really works. And he said, and finally at the end,
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: the race is so meaningful to so many people. Everyone
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: has their own story, but almost nothing is better at
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: for a year of training then hearing you are iron Man.
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: When he crossed the finish line, it's awesome. They have
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: Auzzie singing it. I would, I would? Who else? I
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: don't know. I guess Deo could. Again. That is John
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: Patoniac Dio is dead, oh is he? Yeah? Ronnie James
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: Dio has passed on since when within the last couple
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: of years. Yeah. One of the coolest tattoos have ever seen.
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: Somebody got like on their arm, their forearms. I've seen that,
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: so that when they make like the devil horns or whatever,
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: it's Ronnie Dio making the devil horns and the person's
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: fingers his arm becomes Yeah, it's really neat it. I
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: saw that and I thought, man, that's the coolest tattoo
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: ever seen. I think it might be. It's pretty Hats
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: off to Chris Christofferson's manager, who actually is the person
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: with that? That's right? Uh. If you want to get
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: in touch with us, like who is that John Patoniac?
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: Thanks John? If you want to get touch of this,
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: like John, congratulations too. You can go onto Stuff you
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: Should Know and check out our social links. You can
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: also send us an email to stuff podcast at iHeart
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production
• 53:14
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• 53:16
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• 53:19
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