Sometimes when I am discussing missing persons cases, I am asked what is the longest a person has been missing, or similarly what is the oldest missing person case you have looked at. The question, I suppose, which is really meant to be one in the same is, ‘What is the coldest of cold cases out there’?
In considering the above, and always the master of ‘Dad jokes’, my usual reply was, “Richard the 3rd, reported missing in 1485. However, considering he was found under a London car park in 2012, I guess that one is now closed”. Which leaves perhaps others to consider, such as Colonel Percy Fawcett lost in the Amazon jungle, Brazil in 1925, or Amelia Earhart in 1937. However, I know we could all get into huge arguments about cases dating back to pre-roman times, and certainly well BC, some in which whole armies have disappeared. So, I am only going to raise one recently discovered case, the Ice-Man.
The Ice-Man, who was found in 1991, at an elevation of 3,210 metres in the Otztal Alps on the Austrian/Italian border, has been recently named ‘Otzi’. I say recently because scientific analysis of his mummified body indicates that he has been there for approximately 5,000 years.
When we embark on life we take each step forward as an unknown journey on an adventure, never really understanding where the destination is only where we think it is. Between us and our idea of where we are heading are the crisscross paths of a thousand others all backpacking the perilous exhilarating highway of life. Sometimes we pass unnoticed or just doff our hats, waving from a distance, sometimes we blend and sometimes we clash.
Most of us end our lives surrounded by family. Others tragically, yet thankfully fewer, perhaps die as a result of a sudden accident or in some insanity inspired situation or conflict. Even today, as always only as a rarity do a few of us disappear into the vastness of a mountain or jungle wilderness, such as this case.
The scientific analysis of Otzi is amazing and was not only able to determine the obvious things relating to age and gender but also extended to what he had eaten in recent months, leading up to hours before his death. This analysis of pollens, seeds and other food also helped to identify the strong likelihood of where Otzi had lived.
A close analysis of his body, concentrating on injuries, revealed an arrowhead lodged in his left shoulder, which corresponded with a small matching tear in his coat. This discovery led medico scientists to feel that Otzi died from associated blood loss, which would have likely been fatal. Closer examination of the body revealed bruises and cuts to the hand wrists and chest and a blow to the head resulting in cerebral trauma. A deep cut to the base of the thumb was also noted, which was seen to have been unable to heal before his death. This all led investigators to believe that Otzi bled to death after the arrow shattered the scapula before damaging the blood vessels and nerves and lodging near the lung.[ii]
It was also interesting to note that DNA tests are reported as revealing blood traces from at least four other people found on Otzi’s equipment, including his knife, his coat and from an arrowhead in his quiver.
The incredibly professional and expert analysis by scientists in this case, and the coordination and preservation of the specimens and exhibits by the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology, has enabled a strong conclusion to be reached that Otzi was engaged in at least two stages of conflict. The first resulting in the wounds to his hands and other parts and a little later the arrow hit, with which he bled to death.
The clothing worn by Otzi is also an amazing insight into human ingenuity ala the Neolithic period. All handmade, and built to last, waterproof, insulated to withstand sub-zero temperatures and the wearer able to travel into remote naturally inhospitable climates and generally survive. Otzi had all that he needed with him. He had food, fire making materials and the tools to hunt and to repair his clothes and weapons.
In missing person cold cases we are usually faced with a set of circumstances and little else. However, what we do have is family, and a report filed somewhere, unless it is the recovery of unidentified human remains, and then it means hard work in matching those remains to perhaps an outstanding missing person report.
In Otzi’s case was it war or murder. Was he a missing person? Similarly, to a crime scene today we have some of the circumstances as communicated to us from the scene but a strong and difficult case in building the back story. When we can we always work backwards from the circumstances and build up the back-story, to identify the likely causes and influences leading to those circumstances. It is then that we start to close the gaps perhaps left open in the first response stage by others, either not so diligent, or perhaps not privy to some changing dynamics in the information, intelligence or evidence over time. With Otzi’s case it is so old we can only hypothesize on much of what the back story might have been. However, how amazing it is at how we are able to look at the scientific communication this case has presented to us.
There is a whole lot of debate as to who owns Otzi, as he is an archaeological treasure. But in the end I keep thinking of him bleeding on that mountain side, frozen in time. I can’t help putting the timelines somewhat aside. Fifty years, or five thousand years do we draw a line? I’m feeling that we also have to treat him as a human, not just a scientific curiosity.
Yet we know so much about who he was thanks to so many dedicated scientists. Otzi has told us so much about his life and that of his community 5,000 years ago. What was Otzi doing in the mountains and why did he have an arrow head in his shoulder and other combative wounds. Why is the blood of others on his clothing and weaponry? Simple clash of the clans, tribal warfare? Was it murder? On that topic there would have been no statutes to cover murder, however there would have been the common law of the village, or the group.
What about Otzi’s family, obviously he would have had a mum and a dad, who would have loved and nurtured him as a little boy and taught him all the skills he needed to set him on his journey in life. Given the life expectancy of the era, they would undoubtedly have died, but what of others. Did he have sisters and brothers, a wife, children?
Due to carbon deposits deep in his system we know he spent a lot of time around open fires, maybe just like us he grew up with a favourite dog or even a cat, as it is known they existed in the Neolithic period to keep rodents out of the grain stores. So if we think deeply about Otzi we can imagine him at some time being in a family environment with the foundation bed of love, nurture, connection and growth much like us.
When I think about Otzi, lying frozen in the alps for all those years, I also think about his family somewhere down the mountain, maybe wondering what happened to him. Did they ask? Were they also killed? Or did they live out their lives not knowing whatever happened to Otzi?
I think about contemporary missing person cases, those that I have examined, and those I have read about. All those families of the missing and all the police reports filed over the years. I realise that there are countless families of loved ones throughout history who have lived their lives wondering and many never knowing what happened to their loved ones. I also realise that there is likely little difference between the circumstances and even perhaps the causes and influences in Otzi’s case and that of some of the unsolved cases presented today, except perhaps that in the modern sense there is at least a police report filed and some sort of reasonable investigation.
I just hope that we can ensure that in every missing person report and every unidentified human remains case that everything is preserved for the scientists and investigators of the future to examine, which might be as soon as tomorrow.
(As a footnote I encourage you to visit the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano Italy – I know I will if I ever get the chance. It is a combination of information, technology and science working together and collaborative investigative thinking that solves cases).
Written by Valentine Smith APM (Co-founder of Footprints in the Wilderness) footprintsinthewilderness.com.au - July 2024
[i] Otzi Wikipedia et all references 1-98
[ii] South Tyrolean Museum of Archaeology Bolzano Italy)
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