The story of Ötzi is also, necessarily, a story about the development of the scientific methods that have been applied to him.

The first efforts to extract DNA from his remains in the early 1990s used methods that were primitive by subsequent standards.

The PCR-based approaches of that era were vulnerable to contamination in ways that researchers did not fully appreciate, and some of the early results were later questioned on contamination grounds.

The 2012 genome sequencing — despite the contamination that was later identified — represented a genuine milestone: the first complete genome of a mummy, achieved using the next-generation sequencing technology that was transforming ancient DNA research across the field.

The methods for authenticating ancient DNA sequences, for distinguishing genuine ancient signal from modern contamination, were developing rapidly at this time, but were not yet as sophisticated as they would become.