Ke Wang, an anthropologist at Fudan University in Shanghai and co-author of the 2023 paper, represents the increasingly global character of ancient DNA research.

The collaboration between the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and Eurac Research combined methodological expertise with deep archaeological and contextual knowledge to produce the most accurate genetic portrait yet of the world’s most famous ice mummy.

The Body And The Lasting Question

Of all the images Ötzi research has produced, perhaps the most enduring is the simplest.

A man in his mid-40s, sitting or lying in a protected hollow high in the Alps, had eaten a good meal.

He was resting.