Ancient DNA tells us about the typical: about populations, ancestry proportions, genetic variants shared across groups.

The physical evidence of Ötzi’s body and belongings tells us about the specific: about the life of this individual person in this particular time and place.

The conversation between these two registers of evidence produces something that neither alone could achieve: a genuinely individualized portrait of a specific ancient human being.

That portrait is still incomplete.

There are things about Ötzi that no method yet available can recover: his name, his language, his community’s structure, his specific relationships with the people around him, his understanding of the world and his place in it.

These dimensions of his humanity are gone.