Speaker 1: Hey everyone, it's Josh, your old pal, and for this
Speaker 1: week's select I've chosen our episode on Utsi the Iceman,
Speaker 1: from November of twenty nineteen. Utsi was discovered high in
Speaker 1: the Alps by hikers in nineteen ninety one, and since
Speaker 1: then he has become perhaps the world's most closely studied corpse.
Speaker 1: He's not only fascinating because of the information he's brought
Speaker 1: us about everyday life in the copper Age, where he
Speaker 1: hails from. He's also fascinating because of what he demonstrates
Speaker 1: researchers are able to do in the present today. They've
Speaker 1: gone so far as to recreate his last couple of
Speaker 1: days on Earth. That's how MAC researchers are today. Hope
Speaker 1: you enjoy this episode because it's a great one.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. There's Chuck,
Speaker 1: and there's guest producer Josh over there, which makes us
Speaker 1: if you should know all and.
Speaker 2: Guest uh ghost host Chuck?
Speaker 1: Are you a ghost now? Did you die? Now?
Speaker 2: I just thought if there was two josh is in here,
Speaker 2: I feel a little left out.
Speaker 1: Oh I see and ganged up on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just I had no clever way to say it.
Speaker 1: Ghost host, You're right about that.
Speaker 2: My mouth is working today, my brain.
Speaker 1: That's all right. It's been a long week already. It's
Speaker 1: only Tuesday, really right? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Is it just me?
Speaker 1: No, it's been a long week.
Speaker 2: I mean today's like I know, I don't want to complain.
Speaker 2: Never mind, everything's great. Hey, let me ask you something.
Speaker 2: Does otsy have an um loud or not?
Speaker 1: Yes, it's it'sy okay, rhymes with tutsy. I saw someone
Speaker 1: put it. I think are good friends at Smithsonian Magazine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's ittsy. There's a bit of an R in there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like ittsy all right, like Tutsy Rollsy the
Speaker 1: Dead Mummy. It'sy.
Speaker 2: This is a good one. This is exciting. I've been
Speaker 2: wanting to do one on this one too.
Speaker 1: I had too. But in what spurned? Spurned or spurn
Speaker 1: is where you say get away and spurs like go ahead, okay, nice,
Speaker 1: Yeah that makes sense because you're using your spurs spurred.
Speaker 2: Sure, I'm sure that's where that comes from.
Speaker 1: Surely. Okay, Wow, Chuck just blew my mind? Uh what
Speaker 1: spurred this was there? Let's see you made some news
Speaker 1: recently because they managed to trace his last like day
Speaker 1: and a half.
Speaker 2: Yeah, really like in the past few days even.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and about fifty three hundred years ago. He had
Speaker 1: the same thoughts that we had when we started this podcast.
Speaker 1: He's like, it's only Tuesday, and this has been a
Speaker 1: long week already, a long, deadly, bloody week.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I've been interested in this since I saw the
Speaker 2: facial reconstruction photos. I was like, or's he was Jack Palance?
Speaker 1: Chris Christophferson?
Speaker 2: Is that?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: Okay, dude, A little bit of both.
Speaker 1: No, it's like they said, mister Christophferson, please come in
Speaker 1: so we can.
Speaker 2: Well, now that I think about it, Christofferson and Jack
Speaker 2: Palance are have some similarities. If you put a beard
Speaker 2: on Jack Palance, yeah, sure, squinty eyes, yeah, I guess,
Speaker 2: soundish face, Yeah, I guess I could see both. Christofferson, Man,
Speaker 2: what a legend.
Speaker 1: Remember, Yeah, look there's Chris Christofferson kidding, that's it'sy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's me and Bobby McGee right there.
Speaker 1: Exactly Did you see that Ken Burns documentary?
Speaker 2: No? I didn't, not yet, you haven't yet. Still No,
Speaker 2: I went to buy it the other day and I
Speaker 2: just have not yet.
Speaker 1: So good.
Speaker 2: You got to buy that stuff, right, yeah, all right.
Speaker 2: I just didn't know if there was a work around.
Speaker 2: And you're like, oh, no, dude, here's what you do.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'll buy it. It's like sixty bucks.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, PBS gives it away for free.
Speaker 2: What do you got some PBS connection?
Speaker 1: No, it was on PBS for a while.
Speaker 2: Oh do you have cable or something? See, I don't
Speaker 2: have I don't.
Speaker 1: Even think you have to have cable. Oh you mean
Speaker 1: like like you just stream? Yes, you're you're up the creek.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I thought you meant no, you don't have to
Speaker 2: have cable to get PBS. You just like they help
Speaker 2: people in the world and exactly just beams under your eyelids.
Speaker 1: You know what I was thinking. You have to stand
Speaker 1: there and hold like a coat hanger a certain way
Speaker 1: and your TV in the other hand. Oh, sure you
Speaker 1: can get PBS.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna buy it. Though it looks great.
Speaker 1: Why not? It is good, and I would say I
Speaker 1: would say it's worth roughly sixty dollars. It's pretty good.
Speaker 1: But anyway, Chris Christopherson figures Big into one of the episodes, like.
Speaker 2: It's not worth more than forty five, but go ahead
Speaker 2: and pay.
Speaker 1: That right because it goes to Kim Burn's hairdresser.
Speaker 2: That's right, And that's quite a collection of brushes that
Speaker 2: that person has to maintain.
Speaker 1: But Chris Christophferson is interviewed like today, Oh interesting, he
Speaker 1: looks exactly like let's see now.
Speaker 2: Well, I'll try to get him on movie Crush because
Speaker 2: he played the City Winery, which is like attached store
Speaker 2: building basically, So I will try and get people from
Speaker 2: over there on the basis of like are you gotta
Speaker 2: do is walk over the across the parking lot?
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: His manager emailed me back and said, and this should
Speaker 2: hearten you as well, said I'm actually at stuff. You
Speaker 2: should know. Fan nice the manager and said, but you
Speaker 2: know what, he doesn't really do interviews anymore. So maybe
Speaker 2: I just got the easy the easy pass, right, But man,
Speaker 2: I really wanted that one to come through to dude
Speaker 2: in this office. It would have been pretty special. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but I'm no ken Burns. No, who is ken Burns?
Speaker 1: Yeah? That's true.
Speaker 2: All right, let's talk. Should we take a break.
Speaker 1: Let's go back chuck a little bit, let's get in
Speaker 1: the way back machine. It's been a little while. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're going to go back, and we even know exactly
Speaker 1: what we're going back to. One thirty PM on September nineteenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 2: Whoa ninety one. I'm in college. It's a salad days.
Speaker 2: I'm wearing a Flavor Flave clock around my neck.
Speaker 1: Nice. I was a sophomore in high school. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: all I have to say about that.
Speaker 2: I never wore the flavor of flaveclock. But he kind
Speaker 2: to let that be. Well I should have. I was
Speaker 2: not cool enough, but I was listening to Apocalypse ninety one.
Speaker 1: No, I'm saying, you shouldn't have admitted that you didn't work.
Speaker 2: Now, I know, okay, but no one believe that. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm not that cool, you know.
Speaker 1: Aaron Cooper made a pretty awesome one of my favorite
Speaker 1: ones of all time was US as Public Enemy, and
Speaker 1: I think I'm flavor flavor in it. But you look
Speaker 1: like Chuck D. And Chuck D. It's a cool. It's
Speaker 1: a cool photoshop of us.
Speaker 2: I tried to get Chuck D on movie Crushed Too.
Speaker 1: Did he play the City Winery?
Speaker 2: No? But he lives in Atlanta.
Speaker 1: Oh, I didn't know that.
Speaker 2: And at least part time.
Speaker 1: Boy did he say?
Speaker 2: He didn't say anything because the management company out emailed
Speaker 2: said we don't manage him anymore. So it was just
Speaker 2: a dead end.
Speaker 1: I gotcha.
Speaker 2: But Chuck d if you're listening upon City Market, let's come,
Speaker 2: let's talk about your favorite movie.
Speaker 1: Right, and also shout out to Chris Christophferson's manager.
Speaker 2: That's right, of course.
Speaker 1: All right, boy, we're gonna have to go back and
Speaker 1: edit all this out. Now.
Speaker 2: It's one thirty pm it September nineteenth, nineteen ninety one,
Speaker 2: and we are hiking with Erica and Helmut Simon. They're German,
Speaker 2: but we are hiking in the oats all Alps in Italy.
Speaker 1: Yes, between Italy and Austria, like right on the border,
Speaker 1: very close to the border, and on this peak. The
Speaker 1: Simons decided that as they were descending that they would
Speaker 1: take a short cut. And the shortcut took them through
Speaker 1: this past pastor crevass, and in this little shallow crevass,
Speaker 1: they said, oh, there's a there's a dead body, there's
Speaker 1: a corpse.
Speaker 2: And you were like what I was, because we are
Speaker 2: there too, right yeah, And I said.
Speaker 1: It's right on time, boy, right exactly, yeah, that's great.
Speaker 1: So the thing is is they could they could see
Speaker 1: it was a cadaver, Like they could see the corpses back,
Speaker 1: back of the head, arm hanging out, and they just thought, well,
Speaker 1: we heard that there was a hiker that was recently killed,
Speaker 1: and that's probably who that is. We'll take a couple
Speaker 1: of pictures and go down and tell somebody who owns
Speaker 1: like the nearest line.
Speaker 2: Right, and on the way down, you and I are
Speaker 2: going like, that was not a hiker that was recently killed.
Speaker 1: No, even I knew that, Like, did you see that guy?
Speaker 2: He was super old.
Speaker 1: He was a mummy. The Simons are crazy.
Speaker 2: And the Simons were not crazy, but I'm sure they
Speaker 2: were saying the same thing. They were just out of
Speaker 2: your shot.
Speaker 1: Right, So they they some people went up and I
Speaker 1: think within a day or two they went up to
Speaker 1: try to get this dead hiker who they thought was
Speaker 1: a dead hiker out and they did a terrible job
Speaker 1: with it. Yeah, they used ski poles to chip away
Speaker 1: at the ice. They used an ice hammer to chip
Speaker 1: away at the ice, damaged the body. But they think, oh,
Speaker 1: it's just like some hiker or whatever. It will be fine.
Speaker 2: Put him in a wooden casket.
Speaker 1: And this article makes it sound like he like the
Speaker 1: whole world or everybody who knew about this body just
Speaker 1: thought it was a modern hiker for you know, a while,
Speaker 1: until the body came down the mountain. That's not a case.
Speaker 1: One of the things that when they were getting this
Speaker 1: body out the accidentally excavated was a copper headed axe,
Speaker 1: and word got out that there was an axe with
Speaker 1: this body, and that is really weird. And it was
Speaker 1: copper copper with like a wooden shaft and everything was
Speaker 1: clearly a very very very old axe. And so pretty
Speaker 1: quickly they realized that they were onto something.
Speaker 2: Here for sure. And what they found out was this
Speaker 2: body hi frozen body.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: One of my favorite Simpsons lines ever, five thousand years old.
Speaker 1: That's the same like same little bit as when.
Speaker 2: He goes moon Pie had time to be Abe. That
Speaker 2: was Abe's buddy. What's his name?
Speaker 1: Oh? Man, it'll come to me later, I'll say it.
Speaker 1: People are screaming out there. I canture beer fill cos
Speaker 1: right now.
Speaker 2: Oh what is it?
Speaker 1: I want to say, like Chauncey or Chalmers? Is not
Speaker 1: that something very similar to that? Honestly? Look it up.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, I'm going to keep going. Okay, So
Speaker 2: they get this body out and removed it on September
Speaker 2: twenty third, ninety one, sealed it up, like you said,
Speaker 2: flew it out of town in a wooden coffin to Ennsbrook,
Speaker 2: the Institute of Forensic Medicine, And there was an archaeologist
Speaker 2: named Conrad Spindla there who said, this body's at least
Speaker 2: four thousand years old, at the very least.
Speaker 1: What's abes friends name, Jasper Beery Lasper?
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course. So they nicknamed them Utsy because of
Speaker 2: the region of the oats, all Alps. Very cute little
Speaker 2: name it is.
Speaker 1: Other people call him frozen Fritz. Oh really yeah, I
Speaker 1: like it's the way more.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Ootsy's nice. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So in pretty short order they realized that what they
Speaker 1: had just excavated in the roughest possible manner and accidentally
Speaker 1: come upon was the corpse of a fifty three hundred
Speaker 1: year old old body.
Speaker 2: Yes, And when I said the guy said it was
Speaker 2: four thousand years old, he said that was the initial,
Speaker 2: like he's at least this.
Speaker 1: Old, right, Yeah, But it turns out that after further study,
Speaker 1: they figured out he was actually fifty three hundred years old. Right,
Speaker 1: and that he lived in the Copper Age, which was
Speaker 1: a relatively brief period in human history, but a really
Speaker 1: important one between the Neolithic Age at the end of
Speaker 1: the Neolithic Age when the first farmers started to appear,
Speaker 1: and the Bronze Age, when the first what we consider
Speaker 1: society and civilization in history began. Right, And we know
Speaker 1: very little about this, and what these hikers had discovered
Speaker 1: was a snapshot of life during that time because Leutze
Speaker 1: appeared to have just died fell where he died.
Speaker 2: Or died where he fell.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was almost there, and leaving his belongings with him,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't He wasn't like a great revered figure.
Speaker 1: He wasn't buried, he wasn't prepared. He was intact for
Speaker 1: fifty three hundred years on this glacier.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was the biggest deal because they have mummies,
Speaker 2: and they have older mummies, but like you said, it's
Speaker 2: their organs are removed. They're filled with you know, embalming
Speaker 2: chemicals and things they used at the time for preservation
Speaker 2: for the afterlife and all this. So this was a
Speaker 2: really big deal to find this body just really really
Speaker 2: scarily well preserved. And when we say well preserved. It
Speaker 2: doesn't look like Chris Christofferson, but not anymore. The organs
Speaker 2: were there and like, didn't the red blood cells have
Speaker 2: stiff inside.
Speaker 1: Still intact. Yeah, it's the oldest intact blood sample ever taken.
Speaker 1: Outsi's was so and the fact that he wasn't buried
Speaker 1: provides a snapshot. It wasn't ritualized. It was this guy
Speaker 1: was just living his life and he died and happened
Speaker 1: to be preserved perfectly. See, his belongings were preserved along
Speaker 1: with them, and things that are organic can typically typically
Speaker 1: decay long before fifty three hundred years comes and goes.
Speaker 1: So his clothing made of like different types of leather
Speaker 1: was preserved. His his coat or cape made of woven
Speaker 1: grasses was preserved.
Speaker 2: It was all really cool when you look at the
Speaker 2: shoes and the bear skin hat and right, it's very cool.
Speaker 1: Bear skin hat was another one. His toolkit was preserved.
Speaker 1: All of the stuff that we had like like just
Speaker 1: kind of little hints and traces and glimpses of from
Speaker 1: different like burial caches or just happened to find some
Speaker 1: artifact or whatever. This was like a straight up polaroid
Speaker 1: picture of life in the Coppers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was almost like someone stumbled upon a Museum
Speaker 2: of Natural History display, but it was real, right, you.
Speaker 1: Know, well put chuck. You know who would have loved
Speaker 1: that analogy? Chris Christopher's.
Speaker 2: It's not going to say either Jasper or Artsy.
Speaker 1: And I don't mean would have in the fact that
Speaker 1: he's dead, I mean would have had he heard it.
Speaker 1: I agree, he's never going to hear this.
Speaker 2: You never know.
Speaker 1: I'm like using reverse they call his manager right now.
Speaker 2: Well you might as well. Willie Nelson will never listen
Speaker 2: to these either, neither World Dolly Parton. Yeah, we want
Speaker 2: all the country legends listening.
Speaker 1: Ronnie millsapp will never hear this, excuse said with this, sure, okay,
Speaker 1: not with us though, because he doesn't listen to stuff,
Speaker 1: you should know it never will.
Speaker 2: So apparently where see actually fell was pretty lucky because
Speaker 2: it was in a very shallow crevass, and the fact
Speaker 2: that that was kind of walled up on both sides
Speaker 2: of him kept him. If he was just out in
Speaker 2: the open, the freeze thought cycle over the years would
Speaker 2: have washed everything away and ripped him apart. And it
Speaker 2: didn't happen because he kind of fell in this crevass,
Speaker 2: all five to two one hundred and thirty four pounds
Speaker 2: of him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is one hundred and fifty eight centimeters and
Speaker 1: sixty one kilograms.
Speaker 2: That's right. He had brown eyes. Apparently at five to
Speaker 2: two was even a little short for the time. But
Speaker 2: he was RiPP Yeah. He was pretty sturdy, you know,
Speaker 2: in his mid forties, like we said, and really strong legs.
Speaker 2: And you know, kind of the fun thing about this
Speaker 2: is the archaeological forensics of trying to piece together like
Speaker 2: what was he doing, how did he die? We'll get
Speaker 2: to all that, but just the fact that, like he
Speaker 2: had big legs. They were like this guy, he's probably
Speaker 2: goat hurt her. He's walking up and down these mountains
Speaker 2: all the time, right, look at those calves.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he looked like that guy from that one Liberty
Speaker 1: Mutual commercial. I don't know what you mean, It doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: Like ten people just laughed.
Speaker 2: What else did he had? He had a dagger, He
Speaker 2: had that axe you were talking about. The dagger, had
Speaker 2: a wicker sheath. He had a backpack. He had a
Speaker 2: leather pouch.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The backpack, by the way, we'll never know how
Speaker 1: it worked because it got destroyed by the people who
Speaker 1: went and really dug him out of the ice.
Speaker 2: He had some rudimentary snow shoes. He had a belt
Speaker 2: he had in a belt that matched his cape, right, yeah,
Speaker 2: oh man, and we'll talk about that. But apparently they
Speaker 2: think that was on purpose.
Speaker 1: Yes, that he was a bit of a fashionista. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He had a couple of like vessels that were lined
Speaker 1: with maple leaves that he used to carry embers from
Speaker 1: place to place so he wouldn't have to start a
Speaker 1: fire again. And all this stuff. You're like, I'm cool,
Speaker 1: a flint dagger, cool copper acts. Oh, some members I
Speaker 1: think it's all cool. Yeah I do too. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: I can see people out there being like, uh, talk
Speaker 1: about math or something. Right. The thing is is like
Speaker 1: all the stuff that seems kind of boring and superficial
Speaker 1: has been so thoroughly studied that it's actually been used
Speaker 1: to paint a larger picture. Like we understand the copper
Speaker 1: age in Europe way better than we did before he
Speaker 1: was discovered, just from finding this. The few things that
Speaker 1: he died with, yeah, and him himself.
Speaker 2: He also interestingly had sixty one tattoos all over his body.
Speaker 1: Chuck, I've been waiting for this day. What you said
Speaker 1: tattoos correctly?
Speaker 2: Oh you mean the tattoos.
Speaker 1: I mean I shouldn't say anything.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, and they were. They covered them from head
Speaker 2: to toe in different parts, and they didn't use needles
Speaker 2: back then obviously, but they would rub or cut the
Speaker 2: skin open and then rub charcoal inside. And they're all
Speaker 2: They mapped them out in twenty fifteen and organized them
Speaker 2: into nineteen groups, and they are basically, you know, like
Speaker 2: maybe three identical lines, short lines like an inch long,
Speaker 2: or like a cross, not a spiritual religious cross, but
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: Like a plus sign, yeah, or like a Chinese character
Speaker 1: that has some inspirational association, right, perseverance or something.
Speaker 2: You get a lower back tattoo of a thorny branch.
Speaker 2: But yeah, they mapped these all out and for a
Speaker 2: while they thought, and some people still think, because they
Speaker 2: were largely found around the joints and along his back
Speaker 2: and he had problems, and they he basically was marked
Speaker 2: up where he hurt. It looks like, right, and they
Speaker 2: thought it might have been either acup puncture points to
Speaker 2: mark or it might have been the acupuncture treatment itself.
Speaker 1: Right, But they do think that it had something to
Speaker 1: do with acupuncture, which in and of itself was a
Speaker 1: big revelation because they thought up to that point that
Speaker 1: acupuncture had been invented two thousand years after Utzy and
Speaker 1: way further east in Asia.
Speaker 2: Right, But now they think that may not have been
Speaker 2: the case because they found a new cluster of tattoos
Speaker 2: on his chest that they didn't formally recognize, and they
Speaker 2: were like, there are no acupuncture points there, and he
Speaker 2: didn't have any injuries there. So now they didn't throw
Speaker 2: it out with the bathwater. But there are people now
Speaker 2: they're saying like, we don't know if that's true or not.
Speaker 1: No, Okay, So I'm really glad you said that. Everything
Speaker 1: that we know about Utzi, aside from the fact that
Speaker 1: he is dead, yeah, that we have a pretty good
Speaker 1: idea of when he lived, probably what heightweight was, stuff
Speaker 1: like that. Everything else is interpretation.
Speaker 2: Sure, so you.
Speaker 1: Have to remember that interpretation super educated and usually displaying
Speaker 1: the current understanding of history or interpretation of history or events,
Speaker 1: but it is still interpretation. That's part of archaeology, anthropology,
Speaker 1: and history, especially when you're talking about prehistory. Is he
Speaker 1: lived during a time before anybody wrote anything down or
Speaker 1: recorded anything, which makes it prehistoric. But you just bear
Speaker 1: that in mind that everything we're talking about and everything
Speaker 1: you go read about Otsie is very much described in
Speaker 1: absolute terms, but it is our picture and image of him.
Speaker 1: How he lived, how he died has really shaped and
Speaker 1: shifted over the years since he was discovered, and it
Speaker 1: still is. It's still malleable. Nothing is definitive, nothing said
Speaker 1: in nice.
Speaker 2: All right, let's take a break. It's a bad joke.
Speaker 2: We'll talk about uh Ertsy's health, right for this. Was
Speaker 2: he healthy?
Speaker 1: I mean he was.
Speaker 2: No, he was a person of age in his mid
Speaker 2: forties of a time where at that age he's going
Speaker 2: to be pretty beat up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he wasn't unhealthy in like the modern sense where
Speaker 1: he's like deliberately wrecking his health because he's eating too
Speaker 1: much junk food or something like you know me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but he was unhealthy in the way that a person
Speaker 1: would be unhealthy from living close to the land at
Speaker 1: a time before medicine had really developed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, no doctors, no dentists. So as you would imagine,
Speaker 2: he had gum disease, heart disease, lime disease, gall bladderstone,
Speaker 2: hardened arteries, gallstones.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the disorder is so nice. We named it twice.
Speaker 2: Right, he had a whipworm parasite in his gut, He
Speaker 2: had h pylori in his gut, and all of this
Speaker 2: is to say, like you said, he was probably a
Speaker 2: pretty normal dude of the mid forties of the time.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: They couldn't find his stomach for a long time. It's
Speaker 2: amazing how much of the stuff like it was found
Speaker 2: over the years, Like this tattoo. This new tattoo was
Speaker 2: just found a few years ago. Yeah, after like many
Speaker 2: many years of study.
Speaker 1: His birthmark that looks like Abraham Lincoln eluded people for decades.
Speaker 2: But they couldn't even find his stomach and then finally
Speaker 2: they're like, oh, here it is. Twenty years later, they
Speaker 2: found it wedged up between his ribs and his lungs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, then they found it because they noticed he had gallstones,
Speaker 1: so they basically traced a path from the gallbladder to
Speaker 1: the stomach and said, there it is. We found it.
Speaker 1: And they were really happy they found it because when
Speaker 1: they started to dissect did or take samples from it,
Speaker 1: they found that it was full. Yeah, he died like
Speaker 1: within an hour or so of eating his last meal
Speaker 1: and hadn't digested it. He had food in his in
Speaker 1: his colon, he had food in his intestines.
Speaker 2: He had a turtle head peeking out right, that's awesome.
Speaker 2: What his last meal was dried ibex and deer meat
Speaker 2: with ink horn wheat.
Speaker 1: Yes, and slow plums. I don't know why that wasn't mentioned.
Speaker 2: He can get that same meal in Brooklyn.
Speaker 1: Served you by a guy with a waxed mustache and
Speaker 1: like some sort of armband, an arm garter. So yeah,
Speaker 1: an arm garter. That's it. That's it, isn't it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's it.
Speaker 1: So he ate they think some sort of like fatty
Speaker 1: cured meat, kind of like a bacon, a cured bacon today.
Speaker 1: And the iron ike horn wheat was from bread. And
Speaker 1: he also ate slow plums, gotcha? Okay?
Speaker 2: Slow plums?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that they make slow gin from? Oh really, which
Speaker 1: I've never had, have you?
Speaker 2: That's sloe right?
Speaker 1: Yeah right, It's like supposedly a very tart, kind of
Speaker 1: bitterish plum, but it was it's like load of vitamins.
Speaker 2: I've never had it. And remember it seemed like an
Speaker 2: old person. Drink was a slow jin fizz.
Speaker 1: Like an old person who's like one hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: years old.
Speaker 2: Yes, when I lived in Arizona, there were all the
Speaker 2: snowbirds were down there. They drink like slowjin fizzs.
Speaker 1: Really, I've never been present when somebody ordered a slow
Speaker 1: gin fizz. Yeah, I would like to try one. So
Speaker 1: sure I try one. Okay, Josh, go.
Speaker 2: Get a couple of slow gin phizzies.
Speaker 1: Stat make it a double.
Speaker 2: I guarantee you there's a bar in this dumb building
Speaker 2: that has slow jin pzzis on the venue.
Speaker 1: Sure you know with arm guards? Can I keep the
Speaker 1: arm guard comes with a drink.
Speaker 2: So let's talk a little bit more about the copper Age.
Speaker 2: I guess he had. Well, what we'll save his injuries
Speaker 2: for a minute here, Okay, we'll talk about a little
Speaker 2: about his lifestyle in the copper Age. Like you said,
Speaker 2: he was, as demonstrated by his meals, he looked a
Speaker 2: pretty like farmy pleasant life down there, it seems like,
Speaker 2: but not one without conflict, you know.
Speaker 1: Sure, based on his meals, well.
Speaker 2: Based on his meals, he lived a farming type lifestyle.
Speaker 2: But based on injuries we're going to talk about it
Speaker 2: seems like that, you know, he had some enemies.
Speaker 1: So from what I saw, and I mean, we used
Speaker 1: a lot of different articles, but National Geographic is very
Speaker 1: well represented in here Live Sciencehistory dot com, the BBC.
Speaker 1: I came across something from the Penn Pennsylvania, the Penn
Speaker 1: Museum or U Penn Museum. I think they have a
Speaker 1: magazine called Expedition that was pretty awesome, had a pretty
Speaker 1: great thing. And I saw a couple of things from
Speaker 1: historians that wrote up basically descriptions of Utsy and thought
Speaker 1: co which is just a surprising great resource.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, have you ever noticed, yes, yep.
Speaker 1: So in one of these I saw that it was
Speaker 1: kind of put like he lived as a farmer and
Speaker 1: enjoyed like the fruits of village life too, so things
Speaker 1: like cheese and processed grains and cereals, so bread and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. And the idea is that he didn't
Speaker 1: know how to bake bread or make cheese. He was
Speaker 1: part of a village or a society where somebody knew
Speaker 1: how to bake bread and somebody knew how to make cheese,
Speaker 1: so the professions were starting to emerge. But that he
Speaker 1: also was pastoral and that like he herded sheep and
Speaker 1: that's probably what he did most of it most of
Speaker 1: the time. And then he also lived very close to
Speaker 1: the earth the land as well, Like his last meal
Speaker 1: was wild game ibecs and deer and slow plums that
Speaker 1: he probably plucked himself. So he was kind of like
Speaker 1: this transitional human from the hunter gather are passed into
Speaker 1: the agrarian, agriculture based future that spread out just ahead
Speaker 1: of them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like just ahead of them were like real deal
Speaker 2: Italians out there. Yeah, bacon bagets.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well that's French.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what I mean Italian bread?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, in Italy they just call him bread.
Speaker 2: That's right. They I mentioned earlier that his clothes matched
Speaker 2: and they do think, and of course again this is
Speaker 2: all speculation, but these garments were pretty refined, even when
Speaker 2: you look at him now, like he had these fur
Speaker 2: skin leggings that were held up by suspenders.
Speaker 1: By Alexander McQueen.
Speaker 2: Oh man, I wouldn't say that.
Speaker 1: I know. That was amazing, so good.
Speaker 2: And a great documentary on him too. It's good and sad.
Speaker 2: The they talk about the color of the animal skin zone,
Speaker 2: the contrasting colors they think were actually matched like elaborately,
Speaker 2: and he had, like, like you said, a sense of style,
Speaker 2: like you know, is that possible? Yeah, but I mean
Speaker 2: it seems like a lot to extrapolate that his coat
Speaker 2: and his belt matched, and so they were like, hey,
Speaker 2: he had a real personal identity, whereas in it could
Speaker 2: have been just like that's the materials that he had
Speaker 2: on hand that fit.
Speaker 1: That's possible. But I think what they're what they would
Speaker 1: assert is that it has enough panache. Yeah, that the
Speaker 1: chances of it just being random are very unlikely or
Speaker 1: less likely than it being you know, asserting his sense
Speaker 1: of fashion.
Speaker 2: Well, and he was Italian, that's right, So you know
Speaker 2: Italians in their fashion go hand in hand.
Speaker 1: I love it. Everyone who's been to Millino knows that,
Speaker 1: or fearensy.
Speaker 2: I remember when I was touring Europe as a youth,
Speaker 2: my friend and I laughing at the Italian guys and
Speaker 2: the hostels were like, these nineteen year old dudes were
Speaker 2: so put together and like would spend so much time
Speaker 2: in the mirror, wearing the cologne and getting their hair
Speaker 2: just perfect. Yeah, we are just disgusting humans. Sure, and
Speaker 2: they got the girls, so yeah, it turns out that
Speaker 2: they were onto something.
Speaker 1: A little bit of extraff really does it and the
Speaker 1: big hair.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they were great guys. So we met some cool
Speaker 2: Italian dudes.
Speaker 1: One of the other things too, though, that the fact
Speaker 1: that he clearly was involved in a village. They think
Speaker 1: that he was associated with a particular village to the
Speaker 1: south in a valley near the mountains. It was things
Speaker 1: like bread and cheese that they think they found in
Speaker 1: his body. But also the fact that he did not
Speaker 1: He obviously didn't know how to make his own tools.
Speaker 1: Somebody else had. He probably did not know how to
Speaker 1: weave the cape he was wearing. Somebody else had done that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they all had their specialties. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The tattoos, he couldn't have put some of them on
Speaker 1: his own body. He probably went to see a medical
Speaker 1: practitioner to do that. So, yeah, this is at a
Speaker 1: point when specialists and specialized professians are starting to emerge.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a really cool time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is these are the things that we've
Speaker 1: learned from, you know, that we've gleaned from the stuff
Speaker 1: that we found with him. I think it's just astoundingly fascinating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really cool. This is a really interesting period
Speaker 2: I think of human development.
Speaker 1: It's also called, by the way, the copper age or
Speaker 1: the chalcolithic I like copper age. I do too, Chalcolithic
Speaker 1: just kind of coughs out of the mouth, isn't it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So we'll talk a little bit about what might
Speaker 2: have happened to Utsy and how he found himself dead
Speaker 2: on that mountain, because there are quite a few theories
Speaker 2: over the years, and like you said, even this week
Speaker 2: they have some more leads. But he was wounded. He
Speaker 2: had a really bad wound on his right hand. They
Speaker 2: found out he was right handed too, so this is
Speaker 2: a big deal between his thumb and his forefinger there.
Speaker 2: That area went all the way down to the bone.
Speaker 2: But it looks like it had healed up a little bit,
Speaker 2: so it probably happened, they said, within a few days
Speaker 2: when he died, but it was healing. But it was
Speaker 2: a big injury, like we said, because he was right handed,
Speaker 2: But it's not the kind of thing that killed him,
Speaker 2: Like he didn't bleed out from that or anything like that.
Speaker 1: No, huh. So it makes you think, well, what did
Speaker 1: kill him then?
Speaker 2: Right, Well, they think that might have been from a fight.
Speaker 2: Perhaps that wound.
Speaker 1: That has been almost universally agreed upon from the outset
Speaker 1: right that he probably didn't inflict that wound himself. That
Speaker 1: it seems to have been a defensive wound. There's a
Speaker 1: guy named Alexander Horn who's an inspector with the Munich Police,
Speaker 1: and so we should give just a little background for
Speaker 1: a second. When Utsi was found, he was taken into
Speaker 1: Germany down the mountain into Austria Innsbruck. Austria and the
Speaker 1: Germans were heavily involved as well as the Austrians and
Speaker 1: the Italians were less involved, and that's where he kind
Speaker 1: of stayed for the first few years, I think about
Speaker 1: a decade or less after he was discovered. And then
Speaker 1: eventually he was transferred to Italy, the Italian side.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because they were like, he's a founder on our side. Yeah,
Speaker 2: like it just to barely I think.
Speaker 1: Also, I don't know if this contributed to her if
Speaker 1: it came later, but he does seem to have been
Speaker 1: linked to the Italian side, where like you said, he
Speaker 1: was an Italian, right, So he was transferred to Italy
Speaker 1: and when they took custody of him, man they pulled
Speaker 1: out all the stops. They put him up in Balzano, Italy,
Speaker 1: near about I think like thirty miles or something from
Speaker 1: where he was found. They built a museum specifically for him,
Speaker 1: an institute built around studying him, and they proceeded to
Speaker 1: study him more than any other mummy has ever been studied,
Speaker 1: probably any other body than has ever been studied in
Speaker 1: the history of the world. Yeah, for sure, and have
Speaker 1: just churned out paper after paper after paper based on
Speaker 1: their findings from him. So but at first, some of
Speaker 1: the ideas that we have about what happened to him
Speaker 1: come from the earliest interpretations posed by the Germans in
Speaker 1: the Austrians when they had custody of Vizzi.
Speaker 2: Right, which weren't necessarily right, as it turns out, no, but.
Speaker 1: Some may have been. But my ultimate point was everybody
Speaker 1: says from the outset that he wound the wound in
Speaker 1: his hand was a defensive wound that came from close
Speaker 1: combat with somebody else.
Speaker 2: That's right. For a while they thought there was an
Speaker 2: Austrian archaeologist named Conrad Spindler that I mentioned earlier that
Speaker 2: they sort of recreated the scene, and their contention early
Speaker 2: on was like man that acts is leaning up against
Speaker 2: the rock, it's propped up there, like we think everything
Speaker 2: is literally frozen in time from how it was. And
Speaker 2: I think that's one of the things that they've later refuted, right,
Speaker 2: and they said that it looks like things might have
Speaker 2: moved around some.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they think that the what would you call it,
Speaker 1: the site I guess from the freeze thaw cycle just
Speaker 1: kind of distributed, redistributed the stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which you know, it's still all valid, but not
Speaker 2: necessarily it was not necessarily exactly as it was at
Speaker 2: his moment of death. Indeed, they did find his hat though,
Speaker 2: off of his head, as if it just like kind
Speaker 2: of fell off of his head, which might have been true.
Speaker 1: Right. So some of those early stuff, they also found
Speaker 1: what they thought were fractured ribs that had not healed. Right,
Speaker 1: So the earliest picture was this like they treated it
Speaker 1: like this is a dead body mystery. Where did this
Speaker 1: dead body come from? How did he die?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Well quickly though, they also found pollen in his
Speaker 2: gut that they thought came from an autumn plant, so
Speaker 2: they were like, he died in the fall, right, Okay,
Speaker 2: so that's the full setup of the bad information.
Speaker 1: So the first idea, and I think it was Spindler
Speaker 1: who came up with the disaster theory, was I think
Speaker 1: so Conrad Spindler said, Okay, here's what happened to outsy
Speaker 1: he came down from the mountain, probably hurting some sheep
Speaker 1: or goats in the fall, went down to his village
Speaker 1: and gotten an altercation with somebody, cut his hand.
Speaker 2: You're looking at my wife, right, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: That's nice, and he fled or oh, and part of
Speaker 1: the altercation also resulted in some cracked ribs, right, and
Speaker 1: either fled or laughter escaped up the mountain again where
Speaker 1: he became exhausted from his cracked ribs and his cut hand,
Speaker 1: and he laid down or fell into this little shallow
Speaker 1: crevasse and died of exposure to hypothermia. That was the
Speaker 1: disaster theory, and that was that, you know, I mean
Speaker 1: they had that for a few years, and somebody came
Speaker 1: along and said, I don't think that's right.
Speaker 2: That's right, because they found out some of the things,
Speaker 2: like the site had melted some and then things were
Speaker 2: in different positions they originally thought. Probably they examined the
Speaker 2: ribs again and said they were actually not fractured before
Speaker 2: he died.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that they were just a little bent.
Speaker 2: Yeah, from like after his death.
Speaker 1: Probably from the push of ice, the pressure from ice
Speaker 1: feezing on him.
Speaker 2: Again exactly'll that'll crack your ribs in a second, or
Speaker 2: binga ribs.
Speaker 1: The big one, though, was what they found in the
Speaker 1: X ray in two thousand and one.
Speaker 2: Right, you know what they found? Should we take a break?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, all right, we'll discover what they found right
Speaker 2: after this.
Speaker 1: Where did they find Chuck?
Speaker 2: They found a freaking arrowhead lodged in his shoulder, back shoulder.
Speaker 1: That was a verbatim quote from the press conference. This
Speaker 1: was a big deal.
Speaker 2: They missed it for ten years, they missed the thing,
Speaker 2: and they found it. Yeah, it was just a regular
Speaker 2: X ray and they said, wait a minute, that looks
Speaker 2: denser than bone. Yeah, what is that.
Speaker 1: It's a triangle.
Speaker 2: It's a triangle. And it was a thirteen millimeter gash
Speaker 2: along a major artery in his chest. And they're like,
Speaker 2: he bled to death up there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they said, there's no way he would have survived this.
Speaker 1: It is unhealed. This is finally what killed him. So
Speaker 1: this disaster theory that he got in an altercation but
Speaker 1: ultimately died of exposure or hypothermia was replaced by the
Speaker 1: murder theory, right, which is very similar, but there's some
Speaker 1: important nuances and differences. One, so the cracked rib thing
Speaker 1: just throw that away. It was a red herring, but
Speaker 1: the altercation is still the same. He comes down the mountain,
Speaker 1: he gets in a fight of some sort, goes back
Speaker 1: up the mountain with his cut hand, and while he's
Speaker 1: hanging out, maybe tending to his wound, maybe trying to
Speaker 1: figure out what to do next. That's my arrow impression.
Speaker 2: Message for you, sir.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, right in the back, in the back from
Speaker 1: a distance, they think due to the penetration from the
Speaker 1: arrowhead from about thirty meters.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's good shot.
Speaker 1: Ye, that is it is a good shot because it
Speaker 1: was a kill shot from thirty meters one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty feet. That's a waste. Yeah, I can't quite put
Speaker 1: it into an easy analogy, but that's a long that's
Speaker 1: a long way. Yeah. And the fact that it was
Speaker 1: in the back. He never saw it coming and it
Speaker 1: would have killed him pretty quickly.
Speaker 2: It was a punk move, is what it was. It was.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing, because his possessions were left intact and
Speaker 1: because he had that defensive wound.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they think that this was.
Speaker 1: The result of his death, as murder was the result
Speaker 1: of a personal conflict. There was no theft involved or
Speaker 1: anything like that, right, because his copper axe alone would
Speaker 1: have been pretty valuable at the time that somebody would
Speaker 1: have taken it had they killed him for something like robbery.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so this was a vendetta, yes, or it released
Speaker 2: a personal fight that happened that day, yeah, or maybe
Speaker 2: a long standing feud. There's no way to tell.
Speaker 1: Here. We reached the point where the historians and the
Speaker 1: archaeologists are like, we really can't say, but here are
Speaker 1: some ideas.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: For me, it's either the person who he fought came
Speaker 1: back for revenge. I think, and this is a total guest,
Speaker 1: but I was trained in history, so I'm allowed to
Speaker 1: do that.
Speaker 2: Sure he was trained in history.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was. I studied history in college. That's what
Speaker 1: they call it. They're like, this is how you do it,
Speaker 1: trained history camp. Right. He was successful in that hand
Speaker 1: to hand combat and killed the other person. Whether it
Speaker 1: was offensive or defensive. I like to think it was defensive.
Speaker 1: He didn't have a choice. But the person's family came
Speaker 1: back and killed him up on the mountain, gotcha. That's
Speaker 1: the current idea. Well, not that last part that it
Speaker 1: was his family, but what I said leading up to that,
Speaker 1: everything about that, everything else about that I'm really sorry,
Speaker 1: Chris Christofferson. That's the current idea of what happened to it.
Speaker 2: I think. So you're not going with my jealous lover theory.
Speaker 1: No, okay, no, I'm not all right.
Speaker 2: I think it was a woman with that arrow.
Speaker 1: You think the woman a woman shot him?
Speaker 2: Yeah, jealous lover. I think he was stepping out and
Speaker 2: he was like holding up his hands like baby, baby,
Speaker 2: it wouldn't me. And she slices them with the her
Speaker 2: implement of choice and then dice ism with the era
Speaker 2: and then he's like, this is getting too serious. You're crazy,
Speaker 2: and so he heads up the mountains and she's like,
Speaker 2: I'll show you crazy. She turns into close, she goes
Speaker 2: and forges an arrow, and then in that time it
Speaker 2: took her to forge that arrow from hardened molten you know, flint.
Speaker 1: Flint shirt chirt.
Speaker 2: He's up that hill a little bit and she's like,
Speaker 2: no problem, watch this right in the back.
Speaker 1: I like that one too, all right. I'm going with family, family,
Speaker 1: because I mean, yeah, you know the rule, can't trust family,
Speaker 1: trust family.
Speaker 2: So, speaking of that chirt, he did not have he
Speaker 2: didn't have blanks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this is evidence that he didn't know how
Speaker 1: to create his own tools.
Speaker 2: Yeah, somebody applicate these tools, which apparently were sort of
Speaker 2: on their last legs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was another thing too, So he did not
Speaker 1: have what he needed. Like imagine if you had if
Speaker 1: you had like a a tool an X no, a knife, okay,
Speaker 1: and it's made a flint and you use it over
Speaker 1: and over and over again, it's gonna get worn down
Speaker 1: and eventually it's gonna get so worn down that you
Speaker 1: just can't use it anymore. This is essentially the state
Speaker 1: of his arrowheads and his knife and some of his
Speaker 1: other his stone tools. In particular, that he was not
Speaker 1: in a position to defend himself with his own tools
Speaker 1: because he'd used them up.
Speaker 2: And I wonder if if he's not making these in
Speaker 2: the village, if they're like Ertsy's, you know, he's have
Speaker 2: you guys noticed he's on the way out, Like, we're
Speaker 2: not going to be making any more tools for Artsy, right, yeah,
Speaker 2: I can. We don't have He'll just make do with
Speaker 2: what he's got.
Speaker 1: It's a but he owes me money.
Speaker 2: So should we talk about moss. This was astounding to
Speaker 2: me that this happened in the last few days, because
Speaker 2: did you pick this out before this happened, or was
Speaker 2: it serenigity?
Speaker 1: This is what I saw that it made me say
Speaker 1: it's time.
Speaker 2: Okay, I got you. So researchers found these moth spores
Speaker 2: that were inside of him, that he'd ingested, and just
Speaker 2: on him and around him. M hm. Seventy percent of
Speaker 2: the seventy five species of these mosses and liverwarts were
Speaker 2: not local. And they basically said, there's no way these
Speaker 2: would have been on the side of the mountain if
Speaker 2: not for him.
Speaker 1: Right like a bird couldn't have transported it this far
Speaker 1: or something like that, like the UTSI brought these up here.
Speaker 1: And so in doing that and tracing like these mosses
Speaker 1: and spores and everything, they have a big clue. They've
Speaker 1: been able to retrace his steps that last basically thirty
Speaker 1: three hours of his life, the last day and a half,
Speaker 1: and it was not a great day and a half
Speaker 1: for him. He had his hand wound. By now, by
Speaker 1: the time we're coming in here, he's already got his
Speaker 1: hand wound. It's got to be smarting. And it's a
Speaker 1: real problem for him too, because even if he could
Speaker 1: make tools, he would have been really troubled to do
Speaker 1: anything because he was right handed and that's where his wound,
Speaker 1: almost down to the bone was was in his right hand. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's a big problem for him right there.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So what they found in this lower colon, which
Speaker 2: would have been the last I'm sorry, the oldest stuff
Speaker 2: that he had eaten that has not yet been the
Speaker 2: turtle head yet, not turtle headed yet or I guess
Speaker 2: currently turtle headed. Yeah, were pine and spruce pollen, so
Speaker 2: they said, And it's kind of neat. That's what I
Speaker 2: love about this, like historical forensics, like, oh, well, we
Speaker 2: know what was in his body, and we know where
Speaker 2: that stuff is. It's not at certain altitudes. It was
Speaker 2: a high altitude for us, around eighty two hundred feet
Speaker 2: and they know because of where it was in his body.
Speaker 2: This is thirty three hours before he died. But the
Speaker 2: middle tract of his colon, that's where all the secrets are.
Speaker 2: In the colon. Yeah, you know, it had pollen from
Speaker 2: hop hornbeam and that's stuff from lower altitudes.
Speaker 1: It's from lower altitude. But also it grows only in
Speaker 1: the spring and summer. It decays very quickly, so it's
Speaker 1: not something that you would preserve and keep for the
Speaker 1: fall or the winter.
Speaker 2: Throw out the autumn theory.
Speaker 1: Yep, So they say he definitely died in the summer,
Speaker 1: right and spring.
Speaker 2: I guess that means that he probably descended maybe all
Speaker 2: the way to the bottom of the valley within twelve hours,
Speaker 2: maybe nine to twelve hours of his death, and then
Speaker 2: all the way back up again.
Speaker 1: Right where he was found dead. And they figured all
Speaker 1: this out. They retraced all this just from those spores
Speaker 1: and mosses.
Speaker 2: Amazing, they think.
Speaker 1: Maybe so he's down in the valley to begin with,
Speaker 1: or in the village, gets that hand wound, flees up
Speaker 1: to the tree line, and then they think.
Speaker 2: Because he's like the little lady always needs a few
Speaker 2: days to cool off.
Speaker 1: Right, Oh man, you're gonna get some meal for that one.
Speaker 1: I rechecked my right by the way. So and then
Speaker 1: he goes back down, they think, to get some mosses
Speaker 1: because they have anti bacterial properties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can also wrap meat in it, right apparently.
Speaker 1: To I guess, keep it or whatever. But also they
Speaker 1: may he may have wrapped his hand in it or
Speaker 1: something as well.
Speaker 2: Or maybe when he saw a doctor.
Speaker 1: Maybe then he goes back up to the tree to
Speaker 1: above the tree line where he dies at about ten
Speaker 1: five hundred feet. That's along the way he had that
Speaker 1: last meal of ibis and deer and bread and slow plums.
Speaker 2: Pretty good meal, not bad.
Speaker 1: I wonder if he was panicked, if he knew like,
Speaker 1: I'm in a bad way because of this cut on
Speaker 1: my hand, and my tools and arrow heads are not
Speaker 1: in good shape.
Speaker 2: I don't know, because it's interesting you only know that
Speaker 2: stuff from seeing it at that point in history, Like
Speaker 2: it would have been like, boy, I've seen that kind
Speaker 2: of wound before on oh yeah, tuck, tuck, And yeah,
Speaker 2: he did not last long.
Speaker 1: But if you've thought somebody was coming after you, and
Speaker 1: you knew that your arrowhead was useless and your knife
Speaker 1: was like dull and your your stab in hand was
Speaker 1: cut to the bone, right, you probably wouldn't have had
Speaker 1: to have seen that before to be.
Speaker 2: Like, uh probably so well, he was in full retreat
Speaker 2: from what it looks like, right, Yeah, I mean that's
Speaker 2: why he was going up.
Speaker 1: That Mountain's that's what most people guess.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so he was probably scared.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is sad, but that's how he spent this
Speaker 1: last day and a half kind of on the run
Speaker 1: up and down the mountain, which is pretty impressive that
Speaker 1: he was able to make. You know, he went up
Speaker 1: and down the mountain, don't for sure. He was wearing
Speaker 1: moccas and stuff with grass.
Speaker 2: And he was old for the time.
Speaker 1: Sure, and he had ginger vitis.
Speaker 2: Kind of a neat thing is they have found they
Speaker 2: found some weird markers on his male sex chromosomes and
Speaker 2: they've actually traced some genetic relatives at least nineteen people
Speaker 2: living today, yeah in Austria or.
Speaker 1: Not married but related to Utsy.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Pretty neat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think so too. So check. There's another theory
Speaker 1: that says, hey, you know, your whole murder theory it's bs.
Speaker 1: Maybe the murder part is correct, but he was murdered ritually.
Speaker 1: This isn't a vendette or anything like that. Utsie was buried.
Speaker 2: Right, They think that this was a ritual burial on
Speaker 2: top of a mountain, but he you know, it's not
Speaker 2: the kind of Maybe they just want a group that
Speaker 2: removed the organs and did that stuff, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So the premise of the burial theory, called the
Speaker 1: social theory, is that he's not a snapshot of everyday life, right,
Speaker 1: that they didn't that he would have been so heavily
Speaker 1: laden with all of this stuff because we didn't even
Speaker 1: say he had a bow and arrow, yeahvert a knife,
Speaker 1: a hatchet. He was wearing moccasins with grass, and they're
Speaker 1: kind of like, seriously, that's the best they could do
Speaker 1: at this time for hiking a mountain. That's the shoes
Speaker 1: you wore, Like, those aren't mountain hiking shoes at any
Speaker 1: point in his And the fact that the shaft of
Speaker 1: the arrow was removed, I think they point to is
Speaker 1: an example of the idea that he was buried, that
Speaker 1: he was killed ritually and buried in this.
Speaker 2: Oh so they think the killing was a ritual killing too,
Speaker 2: a sacrificial killing. Yeah, oh I didn't get that part.
Speaker 1: And the other thing is they're saying, like this stuff,
Speaker 1: these fancy Alexander McQueen leggings that he wore that were
Speaker 1: basically the predecessor of later hosen, that is some pretty
Speaker 1: nice stuff for a simple like sheep herder? Is it
Speaker 1: to be wearing? That's this is what the social theory
Speaker 1: people are saying. Yeah, they're like, we think this guy
Speaker 1: was actually kind of important and that he was buried
Speaker 1: here as a sign a symbol, and what they found,
Speaker 1: or what they point to is that there's stella like
Speaker 1: monolists that were carved in the Lake copper Age a
Speaker 1: thousand or two thousand years after Utsi because he was
Speaker 1: born at the beginning of the Copper Age, that our
Speaker 1: depictions of somebody dressed a lot like Utzy and they
Speaker 1: think that these are like heroes and legends, ancestors, and
Speaker 1: they're saying, this guy's wearing what these people were carving
Speaker 1: images of a thousand years later. Maybe he was kind
Speaker 1: of important and maybe this is a bit.
Speaker 2: He also had some ornamentation too, didn't he Yeah, like
Speaker 2: a marble bead, Yeah, which you know could mean something
Speaker 2: or could not.
Speaker 1: But the fact that he had so much stuff with
Speaker 1: him does kind of support the idea that maybe it
Speaker 1: was a burial and then they.
Speaker 2: Just send him into the afterlife with all the things
Speaker 2: he would need.
Speaker 1: Right exactly. And then the other one is no one's
Speaker 1: ever explained how he was so well preserved that apparently
Speaker 1: being frozen by ice doesn't cut it. Oh really, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that other people have been found who died far later
Speaker 1: and were in way worse states of decay than Utsie was.
Speaker 2: But they found no like chemical preservation, no evidence or anything.
Speaker 1: No, And admittedly sides, if either one of them are
Speaker 1: being honest, they will say, we don't know how much
Speaker 1: he was this well preserved quite a mystery still to
Speaker 1: this day. As much as we know about him, he
Speaker 1: is still a mystery. He's our love and mystery man.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about let's see, go
Speaker 1: type Otzi in your favorite search bar and it will
Speaker 1: bring up some fascinating stuff. And since I said that,
Speaker 1: time for listener.
Speaker 2: Man, I'm gonna call this the accidental iron Man. Hey, guys,
Speaker 2: big fan for a long time. I accidentally did my
Speaker 2: first iron Man in July twenty eighteen. And you might think,
Speaker 2: how in the world would that happen?
Speaker 1: I was thinking exactly, here's how that happens.
Speaker 2: I've been doing triathlon since twenty fifteen, always planned on
Speaker 2: doing an iron Man at one point or at some point.
Speaker 2: My plan was to do a half iron Man in
Speaker 2: twenty eighteen, do the full thing in twenty nineteen. I
Speaker 2: wanted to do the Iron Man like Placid, since it's
Speaker 2: reasonably close and as a lake swim as opposed to
Speaker 2: river or in ocean swim. That's a hard race. To
Speaker 2: get into though, because it sells out so fast. I
Speaker 2: got an email told me registration was open, and in
Speaker 2: my excitement I misread it and thought it was for
Speaker 2: the half, so I signed up and realized after the
Speaker 2: fact that it was the entire one hundred and forty
Speaker 2: point six race and not the seventy point three. Triathlons
Speaker 2: don't do refunds, so I paid my eight hundred dollars
Speaker 2: plus entry fee and couldn't get it back. I could
Speaker 2: have deferred for a year, but it's decided just to
Speaker 2: go for it. And I finished the race in fifteen hours,
Speaker 2: two minutes and forty three seconds. Nice work, and that
Speaker 2: is from John Patanyak. And I email John Backen It's like,
Speaker 2: you want to give me a couple of little tidbits
Speaker 2: here for listener mail, and he said sure, and he
Speaker 2: wrote back and he said, one thing I can say
Speaker 2: is it really takes over your personal life. At my peak,
Speaker 2: I was training twenty hours a week. And he said
Speaker 2: that is literally just pool, bike or running. He said,
Speaker 2: doesn't count travel to and from the gym, cooking meals,
Speaker 2: prepping equipment. He said, it's literally like a part time job.
Speaker 2: And he said the race was a lot of fun.
Speaker 2: He said. The Lake Placid course goes through the old
Speaker 2: Olympic structures from the nineteen eighty Olympics, and you finish
Speaker 2: at the finish line and the speed skating oval. Oh,
Speaker 2: that's nat Yeah, it's pretty cool. He cine picture.
Speaker 1: It's like urban exploration Iron Range.
Speaker 2: And he said. One of the cool things they do
Speaker 2: if your first timer is you wear an orange wristband
Speaker 2: so all the volunteers and crowd will give you extra
Speaker 2: support and it says I will become one on it.
Speaker 2: And he said, it really works. And he said, and
Speaker 2: finally at the end, the race is so meaningful to
Speaker 2: so many people. Everyone has their own story. But almost
Speaker 2: nothing is better after a year of training than hearing
Speaker 2: you are iron Man. When he crossed the finish line.
Speaker 1: That's awesome. They have Ozzie singing it. I would I
Speaker 1: would too.
Speaker 2: Who else I don't know.
Speaker 1: I guess theo could again.
Speaker 2: That is John Potoniac. Dio is dead, Oh is he? Yeah,
Speaker 2: Ronnie James Dio's passed on. When within the last couple
Speaker 2: of years.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, one of the coolest tattoos I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: Somebody got like on their arm, their forearm. I have
Speaker 1: seen that, so that when they make like the devil
Speaker 1: horns or whatever, it's Ronnie Dio making the devil horns
Speaker 1: and the person's.
Speaker 2: Fingers comes your arms. Yeah, it's really neat.
Speaker 1: It is.
Speaker 2: I saw that and I thought, man, that's the coolest
Speaker 2: tattoo I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: I think it might be. It's pretty Hats off to
Speaker 1: Chris Christofferson's manager, who actually is the person with that that?
Speaker 2: That's right?
Speaker 1: Uh. If you want to get in touch with us,
Speaker 1: like who is that?
Speaker 2: John Patoniac?
Speaker 1: Thanks John? If you want to get in touch with
Speaker 1: us like John, congratulations too. You can go on to
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know and check out our social links.
Speaker 1: You can also send us an email to stuff podcast
Speaker 1: at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.