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Ancient ice man buried
Saturday August 28, 2010 - Email this article to a friend
The body of a man found lieing under the ice in the Alps for 5,000 years may have been buried rather than murdered as was first thought.
He was discovered high up on an alpine pass between Italy and Austria in 1991.
It was first thought he was a climber when his body was found but tests showed the corpse was 5,000 years old.
An examination showed he had been shot by an arrow.
It now appears his body was carried to the spot where he was buried.
Previously it had been thought he was shot at the spot.
The new theory is being put forward by Professor Luca Bondioli from the National Museum and Prehistory and Ethnology in Rome and is reported in the journal, Antiquity.
"Since his discovery in 1991 the iceman has been widely seen as meeting a dramatic end - mortally wounded by an arrow shot while attempting to flee through an Alpine pass," says a summary from Antiquity.
"A careful study of all the located grave goods, here planned comprehensively for the first time, points strongly towards the scene as one of a ceremonial burial, subsequently dispersed by thawing and gravity. The whole assemblage thus takes on another aspect, not a casual tragedy but a mortuary statement of its day."
If so it would seem to indicate he was an important person.
The iceman has been called Oetzi.
For more information and details of why and how he may have been taken up the mountain for burial see this story on the BBC.
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