It’s usually a big deal when the provenance of items at a murder scene are identified–it’s all the more likely that somebody’s going to prison. That’s not really the case here.
The victim was discovered frozen, murdered in the Alps in in 1991, but he’d been dead since, give or take, 3,500 BCE. There may be no statute of limitations on murder, but no charges will ever be brought against whomever shot Otzi (bow and arrow) in the back at his campsite at over 10,000 feet. That’s one perpetrator who will never know justice.
But we know a little more about Otzi, aka The Iceman, all the time. The copper axe he carried came from farther away than expected, southern Tuscany, and gives some insight into how far precious metals and the products made from them may have travelled.
But we still don’t know: just what made someone angry enough at The Iceman to hike some two miles high and ambush him as he camped? Or were they merely thieves who intended to take something valuable, such as his excellent copper tool, and abandoned it at the scene for reasons unknown?
The world’s oldest “Cold Case,” in more ways than one, is still open.
