The isotope analysis — the reconstruction of his diet and mobility from chemical signatures in bone and tooth enamel — required years of sample collection, analysis, and comparison against reference datasets.

The gut microbiome research required the application of metagenomic sequencing (the sequencing of all DNA in a sample, including microbial DNA) to ancient material, an approach that was barely possible when the Ötzi research began.

Each of these research streams has produced findings that inform the others.

The genetics confirms the ancestry; the isotopes confirm the geographic origin consistent with that ancestry; the food remains confirm the agricultural lifestyle consistent with the population genetics; the equipment confirms the technological level consistent with the Copper Age date.

The convergence of findings across independent methodologies — each pointing toward a consistent picture of who Ötzi was and how he lived — is one of the things that makes the Ötzi research so compelling as science.