Ötzi disguises

1999/09/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Giza zientziak

What did the ice man look like? The latest investigations of his remains have given him a new form. Ötzi has changed his image and achieved an adequate physiognomy...Elisabeth Daynes, a
dermoplastic that has changed the appearance of Ötzi, ceases to be the same man. Wide bump, long nose, deep cheeks and thin lips: nothing has to do with the rough and obvious face that the American John Gurch gave him a few years ago.

The famous ice man, well preserved in
5,300 years, was a sweet 13 kg of brooms, bones and skin destroyed by cold and wind, when it was discovered in September 1991 in the alpine ensemble of Ötzal. It was really hard to know anything about its physiognomy because the ice pressure distorted the skeleton.

To know the morphology of this Neolithic man, numerous research has been carried out: x-rays, scanners, DNA studies. Elisabeth Daynes based her work on the "directed" 3D skull, performed by the pathological anatomy institute of the University of Innsbruck (Austria), and on anthropomorphological models, measured by Jean-Noël Vignal, of the criminal research institute of the French National Gendarmerie.

These technological resources did not serve to avoid prejudice on the image of ancient man. At first the form of Ötzi was the one that corresponded to the "prehistoric man", with a rough face. In the latter, for his part, he has the appearance of being a modern man who responds to the vision of the experts of the Neolithic, the meeting point of the history of humanity.