On This Day: The Iceman cometh

On This Day, 19th September 1991, “Ötzi the Iceman” was discovered by two German hikers, Erika and Helmut Simon, who were trekking the slopes of the Similaun Glacier high in the Ötzal Alps.

At an altitude of 3,200 metres amid melting ice near the Tisenjoch Pass, on the border between Austria and Italy, the Simons spotted a body partially exposed by the retreating glacier. Concerned that the well-preserved human corpse might have been the victim of a recent accident, the couple alerted the nearby Similaun mountain refuge who, in turn, notified the Austrian and Italian police. The harsh weather and thick ice thwarted attempts to recover the body the following day but rescue teams were able to recover a copper axe.

On 23rd September, after it had been determined this was not an Alpine climbing accident, the corpse was finally released from the glacier’s icy grip along with fragments of leather, a flint dagger, a bow and other obviously ancient artefacts. The discovery marked a major archaeological breakthrough, and “Ötzi the Iceman” was introduced to the world. Radiocarbon dating revealed that he was more than 5,000 years old having lived in the early (often overlooked) Copper Age. The body’s state of preservation provided a unique snapshot into Ötzi’s life including the discovery of an intact copper axe, a quiver of arrows, surprisingly advanced insulated shoes, and an arrowhead lodged in his shoulder suggesting a violent death.

Ötzi's clothing

Ötzi was fully clothed when he died.  What he wore was practical and functional, affording him protection from the cold and wet, however, his clothing was damaged by wind and weather when the ice melted and was also badly affected by the unorthodox way in which his body was recovered. As already mentioned, Ötzi’s clothing was made from leather, but also from braided grass. The leather or hide garments were stitched together with animal sinews, grass fibres and tree bast [1]. Interestingly he was not wearing any woollen or woven textile even though the first wool textiles show up in the Late Neolithic period (7,000 to 4,500 BC. Unfortunately, there are no comparable items from Ötzi’s era, so we do not know whether he was wearing traditional everyday wear or special clothing. Even so, he was well prepared for life in the wilderness.

Ötzi’s hide coat reached almost down to his knees, covering his upper body and thighs. The coat was made from light and dark strips of goat and sheep hide stitched together with animal sinews. Ötzi wore the coat with the fur on the outside most likely to repel water or ice. Unfortunately, any sleeves did not survive. Since no recognisable fasteners were found, the coat may have been closed with a belt. It had clearly been in use for a long time because the inside was very dirty, and some torn seams had been repaired with grass fibres quite probably by Ötzi himself.

Remnants of a woven grass mat were found during examination of the excavation site. The mat, made from alpine swamp grass, was initially thought to be a grass cape. This interpretation is now questionable, and today it is believed that it was more likely to be a mat which Ötzi used to protect himself from the rain, or it was part of a backpack.

Ötzi wore a loincloth made from narrow strips of sheep hide stitched together. It was originally a 100 x 33 cm piece of hide worn between the legs and fastened with the belt. His “trousers” consisted of two separate leggings, approximately 65 cm in length, made from strips of domestic goat and sheep hide. The tops of the leggings were reinforced with leather strips, and each were knotted onto his belt with an additional leather strip. At the bottom of the leggings were loops that fastened to his shoes. The leggings had been worn for some time and had been repaired in several places.

Ötzi’s belt consisted of a calfskin strip 4 to 5 cm wide. It was probably around 2 m in length and would have been wrapped twice around the hips. Alternatively, it is speculated that he wore two separate belts – one to keep the loincloth in place and the other to hold the coat closed. Another leather strip was stitched onto the belt to make a small pouch. This belt pouch contained tinder fungus, a scraper, a boring tool, a bone awl and a flint flake.

During excavations, Ötzi’s right shoe was found on his foot. This was removed for restoration. Only the netting of the left shoe survived. The shoes are made up of several layers with the inner consisting of string netting made from lime tree bast. Dry grass was stuffed under the netting for insulation. The outer shoe was made from deer hide and was stitched onto the sole like the netting. The sole was worn with the fur on the inside. The shoe was tied onto the foot with bast string. Experiments with reconstructed shoes have shown that they are warm and comfortable even on long treks but provide little protection from the wet. Presumably, therefore, any wet grass was simply replaced.

A bearskin cap was also uncovered during the archaeological excavation. Pieces of bearskin had been stitched together to form a hemispherical shape with the cap held in place by a chin strap.

What did he look like?  

By current estimates, at the time of his death Ötzi was approximately 1.65 metres (5 ft 5 in) tall, weighed about 61 kilograms (134 lb) and was about 45 years of age. Using modern 3-D technology, a facial reconstruction has been created for the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, Italy. It shows Ötzi looking old for his years, with deep-set brown eyes, a beard, a furrowed face, and sunken cheeks. He is depicted looking tired and ungroomed. Further analysis showed Ötzi had a total of 61 tattoos, created from pigment manufactured out of fireplace ash or soot and consisting of 19 groups of black lines. These include groups of parallel lines running along the length of his body and to both sides of the lumbar spine, as well as a cruciform mark behind the right knee and on the right ankle, and parallel lines around the left wrist. The greatest concentration of markings was found on his legs, however. The tattoos appear to be over the sites of injuries Ötzi had sustained. It has been speculated that these tattoos may have been related to pain relief treatments similar to acupressure or acupuncture. If so, then this is at least 2,000 years before their previously known earliest use in China (ca. 1000 BC). Recent research into archaeological evidence for ancient tattooing has confirmed that Ötzi remains the oldest tattooed human mummy yet discovered.

Last meal

Given the state of Ötzi's preservation, identifying his diet proved difficult because his stomach seemed to be missing. In fact, the misplaced organ eluded researchers for some 20 years until, in 2009, while looking at new radiographic scans it was found inexplicably pushed up under his ribs where the lower lungs would normally sit. Significantly for the researchers, it was completely full, which meant that after a battery of tests they were able to determine Ötzi's last meal. Lipids and protein analysis indicated that he was eating both muscle and fat of the ibex (Capra ibex), a wild goat still common in the Ötztal Alps, red deer meat (Cervus elaphus), undigested einkorn wheat, and traces of toxic fern. While being a reasonably well-balanced mix of carbohydrates and proteins but, at around 50%, his diet was alarmingly high in fat compared to the 10% in the average modern diet. Yet, at the altitude Ötzi was hunting or trekking, his increased fat intake would have provided the necessary energy to survive in the harsh Alpine environment.

It is most likely the meat was dried for preservation since fresh meat would have spoiled quickly. The presence of carbon flecks also hinted that the meat could have been smoked. Ötzi also ate einkorn wheat, and the researchers also found traces of bracken, a type of fern, in his stomach. This may have been ingested as an early form of herbal medicine, but current thinking is that it is more likely that he wrapped his food in fern leaves and ingested the potentially toxic spores by mistake - an idea previously proposed for the moss he had also ingested. Whether by accident or design, the discovery of a well-preserved natural mummy nicknamed Ötzi has opened a rare window into the life of a man who lived between 3,400 and 3,100 BC. It has provided scientific evidence for ancient lifestyles and customs at the point when the Copper Age was slowly morphed into the Bronze Age. Bon appétit!

References:

Briggs, H., (2018), “Iceman's last meal was high-fat, high-calorie feast”, BBC News, available online (accessed 16 September 2025).

Katz, B., (2018), “Before He Died, Ötzi the Iceman Ate a Greasy, Fatty Meal”, Smithsonian Magazine, available online (accessed 16 September 2025).

Shaw, H., (2011), “The Bracken Fern: A Natural Born Killer?”, The Atlantic, available online (accessed 16 September 2025).

Wei-Haas, M., (2018), “5,300 Years Ago, Ötzi the Iceman Died. Now We Know His Last Meal”, National Geographic, available online (accessed 16 September 2025).

Endnotes:

1. Bast fibre (also called phloem fibre or skin fibre) is plant fibre collected from the phloem (the “inner bark”, sometimes called “skin”) or bast surrounding the stem of certain plants. Bast fibres are soft and flexible and some of the economically important ones are obtained from cultivated herbs, for instance flax, hemp, or ramie. Bast fibres from wild plants, such as stinging nettle, and trees such as lime or linden, willow, oak, wisteria, and mulberry have also been used.

On This Day: The Great Fire of London rages

September 2nd to 6th, 1666: The Great Fire rages across London destroying four-fifths of the city.

In the early hours of September 2nd, 1666, a fire had broken out in Thomas Farriner’s bakery in Pudding Lane, near London Bridge. At the time blazes were fairly common, which might explain the Lord Mayor of London’s reaction (right). Unfortunately for Sir Thomas and his fellow Londoners a long, hot, dry summer had turned the city’s largely wooden infrastructure into a tinderbox. Within hours 300 houses had been consumed and the fire had spread rapidly, whipped up by a strong easterly wind. Flames leapt easily from one timber-framed building to the next as the fire blazed through London’s narrow warren of streets. Efforts to fight the fire using buckets of water soon failed compelling many people to flee onto the River Thames or out to Hampstead and Moorfields.

By September 3rd, the city’s residents were in despair as the conflagration continued its inexorable spread. Scapegoating began almost immediately with rumours proliferating amid the chaos accusing (wrongly) Dutch and French residents of arson. Xenophobic attacks soon followed. That night brought little respite and as the fire crept eastward, there was genuine fear that the gunpowder stores in the Tower of London would be ignited. Diarist Samuel Pepys (pictured), overcome by witnessing his city’s destruction, wrote: “it made me weep to see it.”

As an aside, we know from his famous diary that on the morning of Tuesday September 4th, Pepys was rudely woken by a servant telling him to get up and get out of his house because the fire was fast approaching his home in Seething Lane on Tower Hill, near to the Tower of London. According to that day’s diary entry Pepys was “[u]p by break of day to get away the remainder of my things; which I did by a lighter at the Iron gate and my hands so few, that it was the afternoon before we could get them all away.” He managed to get most of his belongings to Bethnal Green and safety on September 3rd, but not everything. Pepys’ diary reads:

“…the fire coming on in that narrow streete, on both sides, with infinite fury. Sir W. Batten [1] not knowing how to remove his wine, did dig a pit in the garden, and laid it in there; and I took the opportunity of laying all the papers of my office that I could not otherwise dispose of. And in the evening Sir W. Pen and I did dig another, and put our wine in it; and I my Parmazan cheese, as well as my wine and some other things.”

Some today may wonder why Pepys buried his cheese. The simple answer is that in the 17th-century Parmesan cheese was worth a great deal of money. Even today, it is still pretty valuable. There are reportedly over 300,000 wheels of Parmesan cheese stored in bank vaults in Italy, which are worth over $200 million. Parmesan cheese takes so long to mature that they’re held as collateral against loans to assist the cheesemakers’ cash flow. Cheese is practically a currency. Sadly, the fate of Pepys’ cheese remains unknown, though his diaries describing the incident remain. As far as we know it was never recovered and could still be buried in the garden of Seething Lane just waiting to be found.

Despite the demolition of houses to create firebreaks, on September 4th half of London was burning. King Charles II and his brother, the Duke of York, joined the firefighting efforts but the conflagration overwhelmed all attempts to contain it. That evening the city’s cathedral, St Paul’s, was engulfed in flames. As its roof melted, flowing off in a torrent of molten lead, the building collapsed. It was not until September 6th, the fifth day of the Great Fire, that the flames were brought under control. Just one-fifth of London remained untouched. More than 87 parish churches, 13,000 homes and numerous civic buildings had been destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of Londoners were left homeless but remarkably only six deaths were recorded.

One positive outcome emerged, in the long term at least: the Great Fire had razed the city’s most overcrowded, disease-ridden quarters. While Christopher Wren’s ambitious plans to replace London narrow streets with wide boulevards (as a form of fire prevention) never came to fruition, his masterpiece, the reborn St Paul’s Cathedral, stands today as a testament to the city’s resilience. Meanwhile, the Monument was erected in Pudding Lane to commemorate the Great Fire of September 1666.

References:

Bird, D. (2024), “The Great Fire of London rages” in Anniversaries, BBC History magazine, September 2024 edition, pp. 8-9.

Oxbow Books blog, (2017), “Why did Samuel Pepys bury his cheese, and other pressing questions?”, available online (accessed 12 January 2025).

Gyford, P., (2025), “The Diary of Samuel Pepys: Tuesday 4 September 1666”, www.pepysdiary.com, available online (accessed 12 January 2025).

Endnote:

1. Sir William Batten was Master of Trinity House and Surveyor of the Navy. The Corporation of Trinity House was incorporated by Royal Charter in 1514 to regulate pilotage on the River Thames and provide for aged mariners. The Corporation’s mandate has expanded considerably since then. Today it is the UK’s largest-endowed maritime charity, the General Lighthouse Authority (GLA) for England, Wales, the Channel Islands and Gibraltar and a fraternity of men and women selected from across the nation’s maritime sector.