Bronze Age Body Discovered in Glacier May Be 4,000 Years Old

VIENNA — Alpine trekkers discovered a mummified body in a glacier, and a scientist examining the corpse said Wednesday that it is about 4,000 years old. The Bronze Age man is thus believed to have died 2,000 years before the birth of Jesus.

Local police had initially put the age of the body at 500 years. However, a bronze ax and a stone knife found with the body were “typical” of the early European Bronze Age and helped date it as much older, said Prof. Konrad Spindler, a University of Innsbruck scientist.

Spindler said the remains, clothed and remarkably well preserved, are of “extraordinary scientific significance.”

The mummy will allow researchers for the first time to “form an exact picture of life in the early Bronze time,” he added. “We are absolutely sure this body is 4,000 years old.”

Scientists will be able to study the stomach’s contents and other organisms on the body, he said.

The Iceman, as Austrian newspapers have dubbed him, apparently lay undisturbed for an estimated 40 centuries in a pass between Austria and Italy, mummified by the wind and preserved in ice.

Hikers stumbled across the body in a glacier last Thursday in Austria’s Tyrol mountain region, at an elevation of about 10,000 feet.

The body, which has been flown to Innsbruck for study, shows injuries on the back and head. But there was no indication of exactly how the person died.