The result was extraordinary. Ötzi’s soft tissue survived.

His internal organs survived, though compressed and repositioned by the weight of the ice above.

His stomach contents survived, allowing researchers to determine what he had eaten in his last hours.

His skin survived, darkened and desiccated but structurally intact, showing the tattoos that covered significant portions of his body.

His hair survived.

His fingernails survived.

His eyes, though sunken, partially survived.

He was, in the most literal possible sense, a time capsule from the Copper Age: a complete human being, frozen at the moment of his death and preserved with a fidelity that no subsequent technology could have intentionally produced.