Hikers Find Ötzi, a Man Frozen for 5,000 Years

On 19 September 1991, German tourists Helmut and Erika Simon were hiking near the Tisenjoch pass in the Ötztal Alps, roughly 3,210 metres above sea level, when they noticed the upper torso of a human corpse emerging from melting glacial ice. Believing the remains belonged to a modern mountaineer who had recently perished, authorities from both Austria and Italy were alerted due to the site's proximity to the international frontier. Recovery efforts began the following day under harsh weather conditions. Before the body was finally extracted on 23 September without professional archaeologists present, visitors walked across the site, handling and dislodging items before their spatial contexts could be documented.

A formal territorial survey conducted on 2 October 1991 determined that the site lay 92.56 metres inside Italian territory, in South Tyrol, according to the border defined by the 1919 Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye. South Tyrol asserted ownership but permitted the body to remain temporarily at the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Innsbruck for urgent preservation and study. Radiocarbon testing subsequently placed the individual's death around 3300 BC, during the Copper Age, making him one of the oldest natural human mummies known from Europe. Known popularly as Ötzi, the dehydrated wet mummy stood about 160 centimetres tall in life and died around forty-five years of age.