PATRICK HUNT:
He's the oldest human specimen
we have that is so complete. So well preserved. AARON DETER-WOLF:
He continues to generate
this body of information. HUNT:
He may well be the most studied human being
in history. NARRATOR:
The Iceman. HUNT:
He was found in a glacier, frozen in time for 5,000 years. NARRATOR:
An ancient murder mystery... Ready to go? What can we learn from him? What is his story? We figured he was
probably Italian. Wrong. Eastern European? North African? Wrong, wrong, wrong. Where's this guy from? NARRATOR:
Scientists search for answers
hidden in his genetic code... CARLOS BUSTAMANTE:
We're rewriting the
history of humankind. NARRATOR:
As an artist brings him
back to life. When they believe that it's
real, then I have done my job. NARRATOR:
Science and art join to share
the Iceman and his secrets with the world. GARY STAAB:
We have to turn this thing
from plastic to flesh. NARRATOR:
"Iceman Reborn,"
right now, on<i> NOVA.</i> Major funding for<i> NOVA</i> is
provided by the following... ANNOUNCER:
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through the heart of cities and landscapes with Viking brings you close
to iconic landmarks, local life,
and cultural treasures. On a river voyage,
you can unpack once and travel between historic
cities and charming villages, experiencing Europe
on a Viking longship. Viking-- exploring the world
in comfort. Learn more at Viking.com. (alarm ringing) NARRATOR:
In a custom-built lab,
a team of doctors suits up. Strict precautions are taken. Okay. NARRATOR:
Because this is
a very unusual case. The patient has been dead
for over 5,000 years. This is Ötzi, the Iceman.... one of the oldest and best
preserved intact human bodies ever found. The story of Ötzi's discovery is
still one of the most astounding in human history. 1991-- on a 10,000-foot glacier near the border of Austria
and Italy, two hikers come across the body
of a man face down in the ice. They have no idea the importance
of what they've stumbled upon. Perhaps it's a mountaineer, or even a lost soldier
from World War I. But as they pull the remains
from the ice, capturing the recovery on video, certain clues point
to a different story-- a knife made of stone; a shoe made of grass; a quiver of arrows; leather leggings; a copper ax. Carbon dating later reveals
that the body and the items found with it have been preserved
in the mountain ice for over 5,000 years. Ötzi becomes not only an
international sensation but also a scientific treasure. He's the oldest human specimen
we have that is so complete, so well preserved. With all the scientific
disciplines that are intrigued by him,
that want answers, he may well be<i> the</i> most studied
human being in history. NARRATOR:
Now, new technology is yielding
more clues, revealing surprising secrets about this mysterious
ancient man and the world he lived in, from the strange markings
that cover his body to the DNA in his bones. Researchers are trying to use
his genetic code to uncover his true origins, to track down his relatives,
alive, even today, and help solve long-standing
mysteries about how people lived
at the end of the Stone Age. Ötzi provides a window into what
life looked like 5,000 years ago in Europe. So it's kind of like finding
the Ark of the Covenant. How important is that? Yeah, it's pretty important. NARRATOR:
The clues begin
with Ötzi himself. At the time of his death, he was
about 45 years old, 5'2" tall, weighing about 110 pounds. New research deciphering Ötzi's
genetic code reveals he had brown eyes, dark
hair, and had both Lyme disease and a predisposition
to heart disease. But that's not what killed him
on the mountain. At first, it was thought that
the Iceman had frozen to death in a storm and been buried
in the snow. But a radiologist reviewing his
x-rays spotted something strange that had escaped
everyone else's notice: an arrowhead lodged deep
in the Iceman's shoulder. ALBERT ZINK:
The arrowhead was detected
in 2001. And then the question was did
the arrowhead kill him or not? NARRATOR:
CT or CAT scans of the body revealing Ötzi's internal
anatomy in amazing detail provided more clues. We could reconstruct then the
area where the arrow entered the body and disrupted a major
artery of the left arm. If you're losing so much blood, after ten to 15 minutes
you are dead. From this, we knew that he was
killed by this arrow shot. NARRATOR:
Shot and left to die
on the mountain. The mystery was deepening. Who was Ötzi? What did he do for a living? Who were his people? And why was he killed? The answers will not
be easy to find because Ötzi's condition
is so delicate. Ötzi has spent years
locked in a freezer at the South Tyrol
Museum of Archaeology. His cell, kept at a chilly
19 degrees, is designed to protect him from potentially
destructive microbes. No one enters
the sterile environment except Ötzi's doctors. ZINK:
The Iceman is kept under sterile condition
in this refrigeration cell. And that's why we have to take
care who's entering the cell, because we want to avoid
that anybody brings in any kind of contamination. (alarm ringing) Yeah, ready to go. NARRATOR:
Today an exception has been made
for an artist named Gary Staab. Gary has been charged
with a difficult mission-- to sculpt an exact replica
of the Iceman, a copy that will be accessible
to researchers and to the public who can't get close
to the real thing. We cannot allow everybody
entering the cell who has maybe a certain research
question to inspect the mummy. We want to make a good copy
people can use to see, to get very close, to get data
which cannot be done with the original mummy,
it's always really a risk. STAAB:
Nail bed, pinky,
nine millimeters. NARRATOR:
Gary has limited time
to take in all the details of this rare and unique
human body. STAAB:
I am soaking in every single
detail I can lay my eyes on. NARRATOR:
He must create the most accurate
replica possible: Ötzi's twin. STAAB:
Right index, five millimeters. NARRATOR:
He evaluates Ötzi's skin tone
and texture... STAAB:
The keratin has fallen off
the nailbeds. NARRATOR:
His distorted face... STAAB:
That cartilage is so, so thin. NARRATOR:
His ravaged hip... EDUARD EGARTER-VIGL:
Yes, you have a very big defect of soft tissues
and bone tissues. STAAB:
Because of the damage, this will
be very difficult to replicate. NARRATOR: In the process of
getting every detail just right, Gary will have to learn
all he can about the Iceman and his times-- how he lived, died,
and became mummified. STAAB:
What is his story? What can we learn from him, and how can he enrich our
understanding of the past? Okay? STAAB:
Very good. NARRATOR:
Dr. Eduard Egarter-Vigl calls
an end to Gary's visit. Any more thawing and the Iceman
could be in danger of bacterial contamination. STAAB:
Absolutely amazing. That was the fastest 30 minutes
of my life. This very intimate moment
with the mummy will be very helpful
in the final product. It will be so much better
because of that. NARRATOR:
With Ötzi safe
in his sterile crypt, Gary will begin to bring
his body double to life. To start, the CT scans
that helped determine Ötzi's cause of death will
provide a detailed blueprint for the Iceman's twin thanks to a remarkable
technology... 3D printing. Ötzi will literally be printed
out in three dimensions. HERLIEN DECLERCK:
We use our software to transform the CT images into
a 3D model that you can print. NARRATOR:
Special software
converts the data into a stack of over 2,000
horizontal slices, creating a blueprint
of Ötzi's body. This is then fed
into a computer, which controls a gigantic
five-foot by 18-foot machine known as "the Mammoth." They have the ability to create
the entire print in one piece, which is very rare. NARRATOR:
In this enormous vat, 350 gallons of liquid resin
the consistency of warm honey will be transformed
into a life-size plastic model of the Iceman. The computer guides lasers
around a thin layer of liquid resin. We use a laser to trace out
cross sections of Ötzi and under UV lights
the polymer starts to harden. Once it solidifies,
just a few seconds, a very thin layer is positioned
on top of it and the laser hardens it out
again and this way the model
is built layer by layer. NARRATOR:
For nearly three days,
the lasers continue their work, little by little, until
every small bump and hollow on the surface of
the Iceman's body is present and accounted for. STAAB:
This is very exciting. We're using the newest
technologies to three-dimensionally print
the oldest wet mummy ever found. NARRATOR:
Finally, it's time to reveal
the 3D print. Oh my gosh,
this is fantastic. NARRATOR:
Transformed from liquid
to solid. The face details
are beautiful. That is absolutely fantastic. NARRATOR:
Ötzi's body has been
reconstructed as one extremely detailed
hollow piece of plastic. STAAB:
Beautifully translucent
but it still captures all the forms and the shapes. NARRATOR:
As the model emerges,
the Iceman is reborn. STAAB:
Ötzi coming out of this resin
was kind of overwhelming. Because slowly his face
was revealed, his feet were revealed,
his ribcage. And it was
super exciting to know that that
three-dimensional print was at such a high resolution, I really have something
to work with. NARRATOR:
It is on this plastic Ötzi
that Gary will sculpt the life-like version. STAAB:
It's a treat to see it
in one color because there's nothing
distracting your eye. I'm also looking at anatomical
features that correspond to the structures that I saw
in the freezer. NARRATOR:
While Gary reviews Ötzi's
plastic form, scientists continue
to hunt down clues about the flesh-and-blood man. NARRATOR:
For Albert Zink, who oversees
research on the mummy, Ötzi's CT scans are
especially valuable because a look at Ötzi's muscles
and joints can tell us a lot about his life and lifestyle, perhaps even
how he made a living. The two main ways of life 5,300
years ago were farming and hunting and gathering. ZINK:
You can reconstruct the muscles,
the muscle structure, how the muscles are attached
at the bones. We just could extract
all this from the CT scans. NARRATOR:
Zink notices Ötzi
did not show signs of strain in his upper body muscles
and joints. That might rule out farming. ZINK:
In his upper part,
in his shoulders, in the arms and hands,
there is almost nothing, and for a man which was
about 40 to 50 years old in this time period,
we would expect some changes if he had worked with his hands. NARRATOR:
The scans do indicate severe
damage in the muscles and joints of his legs and back, which suggests he was
a constant traveler. Also, the mummy's knee and hip
joints are missing a lot of their cartilage-- a painful condition
called arthrosis, a kind of arthritis
caused by wear and tear. The physical facts of the Iceman were that he had
lower back problems. The same is true for the knee. We know he had some arthrosis
of the knee joints, and this caused pain
from time to time. NARRATOR:
Ötzi died in the mountains and he likely spent much
of his life there, too. We know from his
physical appearance that he was walking a lot,
that he maybe was carrying some heavy things. So maybe he was
trading something. It could be that he was
really traveling a lot. But we cannot really say what
was his role in society. NARRATOR:
Searching for even more evidence
about this enigmatic man, scientists perform
a kind of autopsy on Ötzi. They remove specimens
from inside his most culturally
sensitive organ... This is stomach here. NARRATOR:
His stomach. And they are able to extract
Ötzi's last meal, eaten only hours
before his death. Some of the contents point
to Ötzi being a hunter. DOCTOR:
So much material
from the stomach now. BUSTAMANTE:
He had wild ibex meat
in his stomach, so he was clearly hunting
for part of his sustenance. He also had einkorn wheat. Einkorn wheat has to come
from farming. It's this classical
kind of interesting mystery. Ötzi's sending us mixed messages
about how he's living his life. NARRATOR:
In addition to food, researchers
also found different kinds of pollen
in the Iceman's stomach. This revealed that Ötzi
had been traveling up and down the mountain within
the last 48 hours of his life. Ötzi seems to have been
a man on the move whose adventures
came to a violent end. More than 5,000 years later, Ötzi's twin is
on a journey of its own across the Atlantic Ocean, all
the way to Kearney, Missouri, in the American heartland. Here, Gary Staab brings
ancient fossils back to life. He is a master model maker, and over the years he has been
commissioned to build replicas of dozens of extinct creatures
for museums around the world. He has fashioned
prehistoric fish, sculpted life-size dinosaurs,
and crafted giant crocodiles. STAAB:
I've spent entirely
way too much time on the inside of large animals. NARRATOR:
From the miniature
to the monstrous, whether it swims,
crawls, or flies, Gary's job is to resurrect
the long dead. STAAB:
So the fascinating fact is that 99% of all life
that has ever existed on earth is extinct. So, I follow floods. I follow volcanic eruptions,
mass death events. I'm a bit of
an ambulance chaser, but I'm just a little bit late. Maybe a few thousand years late. In some cases,
50 or 60 million years late. NARRATOR:
Gary's investigations-- all to
better understand his subjects and the worlds they lived in-- have taken him around the globe, from exotic excavation sites
to ancient fossil fields. STAAB:
Most of the time my job is
to sculpt animals for museums. And we only have their bones. We only have fossils. So I have to take something
that no one is exactly sure what it looked like, and
try and breathe life into it. This is a neat situation; we know exactly what Iceman
looks like. So my job is to replicate him
exactly as he looks right now. What's in here? NARRATOR:
Now Gary faces one
of the biggest challenges of his career: creating the exact replica
of Ötzi the Iceman. It's like Neolithic Christmas. NARRATOR:
The plastic model generated
by the 3D printer has just arrived in his studio. STAAB:
It was an amazing feeling
to finally lift him out of the crate and take him
onto the table. By the time we're finished,
we will work thousand of hours. NARRATOR:
3D printing technology has
provided the artist with a good head start-- a model with physical dimensions
exact to the millimeter. It's a perfect match
to the shape of the Iceman, but the surface of the model
is not detailed enough to create a believable replica. We've got a lot of work
ahead of us. NARRATOR:
Gary and his team will need
to sculpt Ötzi the old-fashioned way--
all by hand. STAAB:
There is not one centimeter of this thing
that isn't complicated. It's going to be very hard. NARRATOR:
It will be a four-part process. Sculpting, molding, painting, and crafting
minute surface details will take Gary and his team
months to complete. STAAB:
The challenges are many. We have not only the elements
of the skin texture, we have the detail of the face. We have the detail of the hands. And we have to figure out
how to replicate the hips. The hip is going to be
very challenging to do. You guys start on this end
and work your way up and I'll start on the head
and then I'll meet you somewhere in the middle, I hope. NARRATOR:
The first step:
darken the mummy's body to better reveal the exact
contours of the 3D print. STAAB:
We can't actually read the
surface when it's translucent. So we take a very dark
and penetrating stain and we paint it over the top
of the three-dimensional print. It allows us to see the surface
in a much better way. So we can read those shapes,
and then actually make judgments on how we're going to sculpt the
surface based on what we see. There are thousands
of considerations-- not hundreds, thousands
of considerations, that have to be taken
into account for while you are doing this. NARRATOR:
Next, Gary replicates
Ötzi's skin with especially malleable
modeling clay. As the thin clay bonds
to the resin, Gary and his team sculpt
every detail of the mummy's surface texture,
inch by inch. Getting Ötzi's skin just right is one of the main challenges
for Gary and his crew. We have to turn this thing
from plastic to flesh. NARRATOR:
Human skin is actually an
organ-- the largest we have. On average, it takes about 20
square feet of skin to cover a human body. It will take hundreds of hours to replicate Ötzi's complex
mummified surface. Pick out some of these
that might work well and then run some samples. NARRATOR:
Gary relies on texture pads to press patterns
into Ötzi's clay skin. STAAB:
I have hundreds of textures
in a box. I pulled them out to see
which ones might match. NARRATOR:
These flexible
rubber patches create varied imprints
on the wet clay. Human skin has three layers. The epidermis, or outer layer, acts as a waterproof wrapping
and a guard against infection. It also determines
our skin color. The next layer, the dermis, is made up of tough
connective tissue, along with nerve endings, hair follicles,
and sweat glands. Finally, the deep hypodermis consists of subcutaneous fat
and more connective tissue. Gary and his team are sculpting the second layer
of Ötzi's skin-- the dermis. Most of the outer layer was lost
to the mountain. (translated):
If you look at the skin
of this mummy, you have to realize that this body has been lying in ice
for years. The ice isn't always stable, so in summer,
the ice melts into water. If it's in water for too long, the upper layer of the skin,
the epidermis, separates and you lose it. The layers underneath, the dermis and the subcutaneous
layer, remain preserved. A lot of hair, fingernails,
and toenails have been lost. NARRATOR:
Enough of the Iceman's skin, along with soft tissue
and muscle, has been preserved
to make Ötzi a true mummy. For Gary, Ötzi is not the first
mummy he has replicated, but certainly one
of the most unique. Mummies can be created naturally
or artificially. Artificial mummies,
like those from ancient Egypt, were made by intentionally
blocking the decaying process. The important thing
during mummification is that it happens immediately. So the natural process is
the degradation or the decomposition of a body, so it has to be stopped
immediately. NARRATOR:
This was the case for one of
the most famous mummies of all: the Egyptian pharaoh
King Tutankhamun. He was embalmed and then coated
in a black resin-like liquid that encased
and preserved his skin. But in natural mummies
like Ötzi, or those discovered
on mountaintops in the Andes, or bog bodies
found buried in peat, the environment alone
preserves the body. ZINK:
The Iceman is a natural mummy. He was naturally captured
in the ice. And he's also a humid mummy, so he still contains
some water in his tissue that makes him also
so difficult to preserve. NARRATOR:
It is luck that Ötzi
was preserved at all. He was nearly lost forever. Fortunately, his body lay
in a small trench, protected by large rocks
on two sides. This trench eventually filled in
with ten feet of snow and ice, preventing the Iceman
from being swept into the deadly frozen current
that flowed around it. ZINK:
This makes him also
quite unique. He's one of a few ice mummies
that exist at all, and he's the only natural
ice mummy we have in the Alpine region. NARRATOR:
The ice preserved Ötzi, but the great weight
of the glacier eventually flattened his body, creating the ultra-lean frame
that Gary is now duplicating. After weeks of work, the replica is covered
in a layer of white clay that matches the texture
of Ötzi's body. But in order for Gary
to finish the face, he must remove Ötzi's head. STAAB:
It's much easier to sculpt
away from the body. So you have to bring it
to where you can focus, get exactly in a zone
where physically, you can work on it
for that length of time and not get ultra-fatigued. NARRATOR:
Ötzi's face presents
a particular challenge. STAAB:
This will be the thing
that everyone looks at. They'll engage it in the face,
in the eyes, and that's where they will spend
most of their time. This is where he will become
a person to them. He has a really
wild-looking face. It's a bit grotesque
in some ways. His lip is actually
pushed up here because he was lying face down
on a rock, and that pressure on his face
and over his nose. The nose is so difficult
to tease out the details of what's actually
happening there-- you know,
what am I actually seeing, what's doing what--
so that it can be correct. It's entirely possible I will know his face
better than his mother did. NARRATOR:
After months of sculpting,
molding, and crafting
the exact details of the Iceman, Gary has reached the most
visible stage in his process. STAAB:
I'm at a very exciting point. NARRATOR:
The paint. STAAB:
Finally, I can actually
put color on. Painting is a very fun part
of this process, and it's very fun to see this
come to life through color. NARRATOR:
From the rims of his eyes
to the tips of his toes, Gary must match every inch of
Ötzi's skin to the original... ...including the mummy's
mysterious markings... Many sets of parallel lines... ...and two crosses. These are Ötzi's tattoos. The Iceman is the oldest
tattooed mummy ever discovered. STAAB:
It's complicated
because there's so many. Yes, he's covered
with a lot of tattoos. NARRATOR:
Researcher Marco Samadelli has
been one of Ötzi's caretakers for nearly 20 years. How did you catalogue
each one of these? NARRATOR:
Recently, Marco set out to inventory every tattoo
on Ötzi's skin. We discovered
exactly 61 tattoos. STAAB:
That's a lot of ink. (translated):
It's difficult
to see the tattoos on a 5,000-year-old mummy. NARRATOR:
Marco's research
revealed something no one had ever seen before, thanks to a unique camera
sensitive to invisible light. (translated):
Multispectral imaging
is a technique used to see what the eye can't see. It's with this we discovered
every single detail, even under the surface
of the mummy's skin. NARRATOR:
The exact number and location
of all the tattoos was a mystery until now. (translated):
We discovered a tattoo
that had never been seen before: four parallel lines
on the right side of his chest. We were able to locate
all his tattoos and obtain a complete mapping. AARON DETER-WOLF:
61 tattoos arranged in 19 groups
across his body. NARRATOR:
Archaeologist Aaron Deter-Wolf studies the use of tattoos
in ancient cultures. DETER-WOLF:
Tattooing has been practiced throughout a huge portion
of human history going back at least 16,000
or 18,000 years before present. During that time period, people have been tattooed for
all sorts of different reasons depending on their culture and
the region in which they lived. NARRATOR:
Aaron has come to Gary's studio
to demonstrate how and why he believes Ötzi's tattoos
may have been made. We're going to take
a piece of pigskin, which is a proxy for human skin, and we're going to use
these reproduction tools to tattoo that skin
in the same patterns that are on Ötzi's body. NARRATOR:
Aaron thinks Ötzi's tattoos
were most likely created with a technique that was
widespread in the ancient world: by using a sharp needle,
probably made from bone, to puncture the skin
and push ink, made from charcoal,
into the tiny shallow wounds. DETER-WOLF:
What you want to do is just
dip the tip of the tool, and then you're just going
to go in very, very shallowly. NARRATOR:
Microscopic and chemical
analysis reveals that the dark lines are made
primarily of carbon, along with bits of silica. DETER-WOLF:
A composition most likely collected
around the edge of a campfire. STAAB:
So what kind of depth? Less than a millimeter. You can feel the skin give. STAAB:
Just a little tiny pop. DETER-WOLF:
That's moving through
that epidermis, yep. STAAB:
I thought it would be
a little bit easier, but it takes hundreds
and hundreds of punctures to actually get a solid line. I am using the exact same
stabbing technique with a brush on the model. Looking at how difficult it was to create those tattoos
on pigskin, imagine the pain that Ötzi
had to go through when he had his tattoos made. I wouldn't get a tattoo
that way. NARRATOR:
So why would Ötzi endure this painful process not just once,
but dozens of times? DETER-WOLF:
We generally agree
that Ötzi's tattoos don't seem on the whole
to be decorative or symbolic. NARRATOR:
For Aaron and other experts, a key clue to understanding
the purpose of the tattoos could be where
they've been placed. DETER-WOLF:
A number of Ötzi's tattoos
seemed to correspond to areas where he suffered
from ailments or injuries. He had arthritis
in his lower back, and there are tattoos
on his lower lumbar area. He had arthritis
in his right knee; there are tattoos
on the back of his right knee. He had arthritis in his ankles;
there are a number of tattoos around both his right
and left ankles. Most recently,
this new set of tattoos is located
on his lower right abdomen. Among the many ailments
that he suffered from was gallstones and whipworms
in his colon, and this is a place that is
very close to those areas and could potentially
have been used to treat the pains
he was experiencing. NARRATOR:
Tattooing the skin
to alleviate pain has been the practice
of many cultures. DETER-WOLF:
There are therapeutic
tattoo traditions that have been documented
all across the world: in India, in Southeast Asia, in North America,
in the American Arctic. NARRATOR:
Ötzi's tattoos are
the earliest direct evidence of this ancient tradition. But the tattoos
may not have been the only medicinal treatment
Ötzi relied on. In the woods
of Upstate New York, archaeologist Patrick Hunt
is tracking down wild mushrooms. With the help of David Work,
an expert in fungi, they're hunting
for two varieties-- the same ones that Ötzi carried
with him 5,300 years ago. This is very much like
the forests that Ötzi would have known
in the Tyrol, where you've got mixed
deciduous forests. Wow, that's
a beautiful example. I can probably
roll this over. Maybe not. If you're carrying
two different mushrooms, you must have
a pretty good idea they address
different functions. NARRATOR:
One mushroom,
known as tinder fungus, is often used to start fires. When dried, it ignites easily
and burns for a long time. The other kind of fungus, which
Ötzi carried on leather straps, is called birch polypore. I'm gonna harvest
this one. NARRATOR:
Most believe Ötzi was carrying this particular mushroom
for another reason. This white section here. NARRATOR:
Its antiseptic power. HUNT:
Take this mushroom, peel off the spore layers, and you can put that
directly on a wound. It's antibacterial,
it's antiviral... WORK:
Here, I have a cut there. We'll put that there. And you can actually
tie it around with a piece of grass. Band-Aid. You don't need
bacterial agents because it's got it
in the mushroom. It's already there. Pretty cool. NARRATOR:
In addition
to the topical treatment, Ötzi may have ingested
the mushroom as a kind of Stone Age
pain killer. The peculiar thing is,
it has the exact properties that act as remedies to what Ötzi had wrong with him. It's been used in modern periods for some of these
same functions, but Ötzi is the oldest case
on the record for anybody knowing this. We thought that this was
a relatively modern discovery. Obviously, it's been around
for a long time. NARRATOR:
As Ötzi continues to challenge
scientists and historians to revise their picture
of the past, Gary Staab is facing
his own challenge in the reconstruction
of the mummy's body. Gary knew it would be a problem ever since his day
in the freezer: the Iceman's damaged hip, perhaps mauled by an animal
scavenger after Ötzi's death. EGARTER-VIGL:
It's clear that the animals go to this part
of the body. Scavenging. Because it's a big attraction
for the animals. STAAB:
The hip is very,
very complicated. In fact,
it's almost as complicated as making the entire mummy
on its own. NARRATOR:
While Gary's studio team makes
hundreds of simulated tendons from natural fibers that are
frayed and dipped in paraffin, Gary builds Ötzi's
ravaged backside. STAAB:
Because included
in the complexity of this, there's dried muscle
overlaid by tendons, then you have frayed tendons
up against bone, the bone itself, the cancellous bone
or the bone marrow inside of the bone
that's fractured and torn apart, and then you have
the soft tissues that overlay the bone
on this side, you've got lower bowel intestine
that's exposed and broken with bowel stomach contents
inside of it, and then you have
fat deposition in here. So just this section alone has
that many different finishes that have to be replicated,
so this is by far the most complicated project
I've ever worked on. NARRATOR:
It will take weeks to sculpt
the Iceman's injured hip. Meanwhile, scientists
continue to search for Ötzi's true identity, investigating perhaps the most
revealing evidence available: Iceman's genetic code. CARLOS BUSTAMANTE:
Genetics is giving us insights that we cannot get
through any other means. NARRATOR:
The genetic blueprint of every
living thing is written in DNA. It's made of four chemicals, abbreviated as A, C, G, and T. These four letters,
in a twisting double helix, are arranged into 23 pairs
of chromosomes within each cell. This is our biological code containing all the information
to build and run our bodies. Ötzi was one of the first
ancient Europeans to have his entire code,
or genome, analyzed. It provided detailed clues
to his appearance and health. If you look at a particular gene
on chromosome 15, it's the gene that most likely
determines eye color. If you see a pair of Gs
at this position, that likely means that
the person has blue eyes. Whereas in the case of Ötzi, we see an A from both parents, and so that likely means that he had dark-colored eyes. NARRATOR:
On another chromosome,
number 12, two Ts indicate that his hair
was also dark. Other chromosomes reveal
new details. Ötzi had blood type O. He even had a predisposition
for arteriosclerosis-- heart disease, often assumed to be associated
with our modern lifestyle. The team also found
DNA fragments from the microbe that causes
Lyme disease, making Ötzi
the earliest known case. But what about his origins? Who were Ötzi's ancestors? BUSTAMANTE:
The very cool thing about DNA is that changes in DNA
literally make us who we are. The material that we inherit
from our mom and our dad links us to all
of our ancestors, and by comparing DNA across
individuals in populations, we can get a very rich picture
of our ancestry: who are we related to,
where did they come from? NARRATOR:
Finding answers
is especially important because Ötzi dates
to around the time when prehistoric Europe
was undergoing major changes, as the ancient
hunter-gatherer lifestyle was gradually displaced
by farming. BUSTAMANTE:
Ötzi comes from an incredibly important
period in European history, where we go from hunter-
gatherers living in Europe to the widespread adoption
of farming. Because it's a transitional
time period in which Ötzi lives, there are huge life ways
that converge, whether people
are hunter-gatherers or whether they're
early farmers. He's in transition. His culture's in transition. NARRATOR:
45,000 years ago, modern humans
first began arriving in Europe. They were hunter-gatherers, foraging plants
and hunting wild game. Then, about 7,000 years ago,
everything began to change. People in Europe began
to cultivate crops for food. And by about 5,000 years ago,
the hunter-gatherer culture had almost completely
disappeared from the continent. It is one of the most
revolutionary transformations in human history. Where does Ötzi fit
into this changing landscape? Did he come from a group
of ancient hunter-gatherers who still lived in pockets
throughout Europe? Or were his people farmers living a more settled life
in the foothills of the Alps? Scientists turn to Ötzi's
pre-historic artifacts for more insight. HUNT:
When you excavate or find someone who died
5,000 years ago, usually, all you have left
are the bones. What is so fantastic
about Ötzi is that because he was found
in a glacier, because he was frozen in time
for 5,000-plus years, everything survives:
his clothes, his tools. NARRATOR:
Among the items recovered
from the glacier were a fur hat, patchwork leggings
made of leather, deerskin shoes stuffed with hay, a six-foot longbow, a quiver that held
over a dozen arrows. HUNT:
If you want an arrow shaft, you want the woods that
he chose, cornel and viburnum. They grow very straight, they're easily harvested,
they're fairly prolific. NARRATOR:
His expertly made weapons seem well suited for a man
who hunted for his meals. But other objects paint
a different picture. Ötzi's finely crafted copper ax, one of the oldest metal tools
ever found in Europe, points to a more advanced
society-- one based on farming. Could the Iceman's DNA
help solve the mystery and determine
whether Ötzi's people were hunter-gatherers
or farmers? To find out, researchers focus
on mutations in the DNA, random mistakes that can occur when the billions of chemicals
that make up our genetic code-- all those As, Ts, Gs, and Cs--
get copied. BUSTAMANTE:
The human genome is three
billion base pairs long. Every once in a while,
you get a mutation, and that mutation
sometimes ends up spreading. NARRATOR:
These mutations help create
specific patterns of genetic variation in our DNA
inherited from our parents. The closer two people
are related, the more of these patterns
they'll have in common. So whose DNA
does Ötzi match best: the hunter-gatherers
or the farmers? BUSTAMANTE:
The only way to get at that was
to have other ancient samples from known farmers
and known hunter-gatherers from across Europe
across different points in time. NARRATOR:
They found the sample DNA in the bones of dozens
of ancient people excavated from archaeological
sites all over Europe. Some samples go back
45,000 years, when hunting was
the only way of life. Other samples were from
7,000-year-old farming sites. And the result? Ötzi's DNA is a close match
to that of ancient farmers, not hunter-gatherers. BUSTAMANTE:
It became pretty clear that all of the individuals that we had labeled
archaeologically as farmers were closest to Ötzi. NARRATOR:
Ötzi's DNA reveals that
he was descended from farmers who were in Europe nearly
2,000 years before he was born. What's more, the same DNA patterns show up
in even older bones found in some of the earliest known
farming sites in the world, in what is today Turkey. This suggests that farmers
migrated to Europe from Turkey, filling much of the continent. Eventually, they pushed aside
most of the hunter-gatherers and their DNA. So where is Ötzi's DNA now? Could he have distant relatives
alive even today? Comparing his genome to modern DNA samples
from all over Europe would provide the answer. BUSTAMANTE:
Who Ötzi really was genetically
surprised us. When we started analyzing
the ancestry of Ötzi, we figured,
"Ah, he was probably Italian." Wrong-- didn't cluster
with the Italians. Maybe he's Austrian? Wrong-- he didn't cluster
with the Austrians. Eastern European? Wrong. North African? Wrong, wrong, wrong. So where's this guy from? And it turned out, much to our surprise, that
his closest living relatives were on the islands of Sardinia
and Corsica. Totally unexpected. NARRATOR:
Does this mean that Ötzi
was Sardinian? Not necessarily. Most likely, 5,300 years ago,
when the Iceman was born, most people in Europe,
including Sardinians, carried similar patterns
in their DNA from the early farmer
immigrants. But over the last 5,000 years, Europe has seen wave after wave
of new immigrants, adding new patterns of DNA
to the mix. Except on the isolated island
of Sardinia. There, ever since
the early farmers arrived, the inhabitants
and their DNA pattern have stayed relatively stable. BUSTAMANTE:
This wave of farmers
that swept through Europe made it to Sardinia
and stayed there as a genetic snapshot of what that wave of immigration
looked like. NARRATOR:
This makes today's Sardinians
Ötzi's closest living relatives. Over the past five months, here at Gary's studio
in Missouri, the Iceman has undergone
a complicated transformation. If they look at this
and they believe that it's real, then I've done my job, and we want only Ötzi
to be the final product. It's just about Ötzi. NARRATOR:
Before the model is finished, its accuracy will be put
to the ultimate test. So good to see you. NARRATOR:
When Albert Zink,
who oversees the institute for mummies
and the Iceman in Italy, comes to examine Gary's work. STAAB:
I'm absolutely petrified
that he's here to see this because he is the person who is the most familiar
with the mummy. My goal is to have him
for one second be fooled that maybe he's actually
looking at Ötzi. I have to tell you something,
it's really good. It's a really good work. I'm really very impressed. It's really amazing. That's good. Wow, wow. ZINK:
Some moments, I felt that the mummy's outside of his
freezer, it's too dangerous. But then I realized
it's the replica. You managed to give him
this kind of expression that you still can feel somewhat
that this was a human being, somebody who lived
very long ago. It's really a masterpiece. This is great for scholars
because with this replica, you can really explore
in much more detail. In combination with all
the other data we have, I think this will bring us also
a step forward in our research. NARRATOR:
With Albert Zink's approval,
the time has come for Gary to share the replica
with the world. All right. NARRATOR:
He's brought Ötzi to New York's
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, one of the world's foremost
genetic research institutes. For Gary, it's like
dropping a child off at the first day of school. STAAB:
I'm a little bit nervous. It's been a really long road, and it's a lot of work
culminating with this day. NARRATOR:
For many years, the director
of Cold Spring Harbor was James Watson, co-discoverer
of DNA's double helix. It's remarkable. JAMES WATSON:
It was very exciting to get DNA from 5,000 years ago. NARRATOR:
Ötzi could never have known
that how he lived and died would intrigue and inspire
future generations. BOY:
It looks like
he's looking at you. NARRATOR:
Like these students, some of whom have been
studying him for years. Ötzi is a great example of how DNA can help us
learn about the past. He's awesome,
coolest dead guy in the world. BUSTAMANTE:
What's incredible
about the Ötzi story is that as technology's
gotten better and better, it's the gift
that keeps on giving. We can keep going back
to the sample, and it yields new mysteries
and new insights into both human history
and into Ötzi himself. NARRATOR:
Ötzi was a man on the move until an arrow ended his journey
through life. But his death on the mountain
would ultimately take him much farther than
he could ever have imagined, and make him one of the most
famous and fascinating humans who ever walked the earth. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪
