After all that waiting, the “2,000-Year-Old Man” turned out to be a couple of thousand years older than Mel Brooks–and better preserved. He was about five feet tall, between 20 and 40 years old. When a German couple noticed his head and shoulder sticking out of a glacier in the Austrian Alps on Sept. 19, they made prehistory. Scientists who helicoptered to the site determined that the frozen corpse was 4,000 years old–the first intact body ever found from the Bronze Age. Mummified by the wind and snow, he came complete with skin, bones, internal organs and fingernails. He was dressed in leather shoes and a finely stitched leather suit, insulated with hay. An array of weapons and equipment was found alongside him–including a leather quiver with 14 arrows, a stone necklace, a fire flint, a knife and an ax with a crude bronze head.
“The find is of extraordinary scientific meaning,” said Konrad Spindler, professor of Early and Primeval History at the University of Innsbruck, who is investigating the discovery. Skeletal remains of buried corpses have been excavated before in Bronze Age graves. But “the Iceman,” as Austrian newspapers dubbed him, was going about the normal course of life when he died, which means he should yield a treasure-trove of information about conditions 4,000 years ago. Scientists plan to study the contents of his stomach and intestine for clues to the Bronze Age diet, illnesses and parasites. They also hoped to search the glacier site further for companions. So far, a sixtyish comedian in a loincloth smoking a cigar hasn’t been discovered.
