The setup (a man in the mountains), the crime (shot from behind), the evidence (the arrow tip, the hand wounds), the unanswerable question (who did it and why) — these elements constitute a story, and stories engage human attention in ways that statistics and population genetics do not.

And the longevity of the fascination — the fact that Ötzi continues to generate news thirty years after his discovery — reflects the capacity of the scientific investigation to keep producing new findings.

Each new DNA result, each new medical finding, each new analysis of his equipment or his isotopes, provides a news hook that reconnects the public to a figure they already know.

Ötzi is, in this sense, a gift to science communication.