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Aug 16, 2023 · The analysis of his genetic makeup has revealed the 5,300-year-old mummy had dark skin and dark eyes — and was likely bald. This stands in contrast to the reconstruction of Ötzi...
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Mar 9, 2011 · Ötzi, the 5,300-year-old mummy from the Alps, has a new face. Using a combination of forensic science and artistry, Dutch brothers Adrie and Alfons Kennis reconstructed his face for a new...
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- Brown eyes, pale skin?
Europe’s oldest mummy has had a makeover.
In 1991, hikers in an Italian valley near the border with Austria stumbled on a frozen corpse. The remains belonged to a man who had died around 5,300 years earlier, after being shot by an arrow. Nicknamed Ötzi, after the valley where he was found, the iceman became a sensation — capturing the imagination of people around the world and giving scientists unprecedented insight into ancient Europeans.
Ötzi has conventionally been depicted with long, unkempt hair and pale skin. These interpretations arose in part from genetic sequencing1 of the mummy back in 2012. But a high-quality redo of Ötzi’s genome suggests that the iceman probably had very little hair on his head and had much darker skin than previously thought, concludes a study2 published on 16 August in Cell Genomics.
The discovery makes sense, considering the mummy’s dark coloration and lack of hair, says co-author Albert Zink, a mummy researcher at Eurac Research in Bolzano, Italy.
Ötzi’s preservation on ice presented an early opportunity to do ancient-DNA work. In 2012, researchers published a draft version of Ötzi’s genome — one of the first ancient genomes ever sequenced. The analysis suggested that Ötzi had pale skin, brown eyes (previously thought to be blue) and steppe ancestry.
Divided by DNA: The uneasy relationship between archaeology and ancient genomics
Aug 16, 2023 · Though the Iceman mummy’s skin is obviously dark, scientists used to think that was a result of being frozen in a glacier for more than 5,000 years. A new genetic analysis reveals that Ötzi ...
Aug 18, 2023 · A fresh study looked into the DNA taken from Ötzi’s pelvis and revealed a special code in his genes, which acts as his body’s instruction manual. It tells us that Ötzi the Iceman from 5,300 years ago, had dark skin, dark eyes, and was likely bald.
Aug 19, 2023 · A monumental discovery would be an ice mummy, but only one has ever been recovered. This week, learn more about Ötzi the Iceman, a scientific celebrity. A long time ago
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Feb 26, 2011 · More Gandalf than Aragorn, the new face of "Ötzi," the famous Iceman mummy, is more wizened and weathered than previous reconstuctions.
