But it was also fundamentally different.

Writing had just been invented in Mesopotamia, and it existed nowhere else in the world.

Wheels were a recent invention.

The horse had been domesticated on the Pontic steppe but had not yet transformed transportation in most of the world.

Bronze was being discovered and developed but was not yet the dominant metal technology.

Most people in most places lived in small farming communities without the urban complexity that would come later.

In this world, the Alps were a specific kind of geographic and cultural environment: high, demanding, connected to the lower world around them by the passes and valleys that allowed seasonal movement, but insular enough that communities could develop in relative isolation. Ötzi’s population — with its unusually high Anatolian farmer ancestry and relatively limited gene flow from hunter-gatherers — reflects this insularity.