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Ice Mummies—Return of the Iceman
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Program Overview
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NOVA examines how science is unlocking the secrets of the Iceman, a man discovered in 1991 frozen in the Italian Alps.
Found with the Iceman are a copper axe, leather clothes, flint tools, shoes lined with grass, and a quiver full of arrows.
Mapping of the site shows that the body—thought to have been discovered in Austria—was actually found 92 meters (100 yards) inside the Italian border.
A battery of tests—including carbon dating, microscopic analysis, X-rays and endoscopy—reveal that the Iceman:
had been frozen for about 5,300 years, making him the oldest frozen mummy ever found;
had heavily worn joints;
was about 45 years old;
Ate a last meal of meat and rough milled wheat; and
had traces of copper on the surface of his hair and arsenic inside, indicating that he might have been involved in smelting.
Reconstructive archeology demonstrates how the Iceman might have built and used his copper axe.
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