The reconstructions produced in this period showed a man with Mediterranean features and relatively darker coloring than the earlier efforts, but still not as dark as the current evidence indicates.

The 2023 genome analysis — with its findings that Ötzi’s skin was substantially darker than previous reconstructions had depicted, that his eyes were almost certainly dark brown, and that he was likely bald or balding — calls for another revision of the reconstruction.

The researchers noted, with some irony, that the current mummy’s appearance — dark, largely hairless, with the specific dried and compressed features of a five-thousand-year-old preserved body — may be closer to Ötzi’s actual living appearance than the reconstructions that were meant to show what he looked like alive.

The reconstruction efforts have, in this case, produced something more familiar and more Northern European-looking than the actual person, while the mummy itself preserves evidence of a darker-skinned, darker-featured individual whose appearance more closely matched what the genetics now indicates.