To understand Ötzi, you have to understand the world of the Copper Age Alps — a world that archaeology and genetics have been progressively reconstructing over the decades since his discovery.

The period around 3300 BCE in the Alpine region was one of significant social and technological complexity.

The transition from the Neolithic — the New Stone Age, characterized by farming, herding, and polished stone tools — to the Copper Age was not a sharp break but a gradual transformation in which copper tools supplemented and eventually began to replace stone tools while the fundamental patterns of agricultural life continued.

The people of the Copper Age Alps were farmers.