Erika and Helmut Simon usually liked to complete their mountain excursions in a single day; they were experienced climbers and knew what they could comfortably manage. On Wednesday 18th September 1991, therefore, they knew that by getting held up whilst crossing a glacier, and then still pressing on to climb the peak that was their aim for the day, they would have to spend the night on the hill. That was no problem as there was a refuge nearby. The next morning dawned bright and, like any other climbers, Erikaand Helmut found the conditions irresistible and decided to bag another peak. It was on their return to pick up their rucksacks from the hut that it happened. Erika saw it first: a brown smudge in the snow, which, as they came closer, took the form of a man. For mountaineers, death is always a possibility, so the find, gruesome as it was, did not unduly surprise them and they tried to prise the remains out of the ice with their axes. What they had no way of knowing is that the body, christened Ötzi for the region in which he was found, had been dead for 5,300 years. He was the oldest frozen mummy ever known.

Dressed for travelling, Ötzi wore leather trousers, a deerskin coat, and a cape fashioned from woven grass. His shoes were finely made with bearskin soles and stuffed with grass as a precaution against the cold. His cap was pieced together from odd bits of fur but it would have been warm. He also carried a backback, an unfinished bow and arrows, some tools including a fire-lighting kit, and a copper axe. He was, perhaps, as much as 45 years old when he died, a grand age for a man at this time. What he was doing so high in the mountains remains a mystery but the circumstances surrounding his death are slowly being pieced together by an international team of experts; bringing to life the sorry tale of a time almost five millennia ago.

Ötzi came from the southern side of the Alps and was born and raised in the folded valleys of the foothills. He probably left a settlement in the Val Venosta, in Italy, on that fateful morning of his flight into the mountains. We can be reasonably certain about this as the microscopic bits of stone in his gut, originating from the stone tools used to prepare his food, leave a geological signature that can be precisely located. He was dressed for the hills and carried much of what he would have needed to make an extended stay comfortable, that is, provided he did not venture too high. Ötzi also carried something valuable and new: copper. A copper axe may have marked him out as a wealthy man and, perhaps, even a leader that others followed. If so, then his reign as leader was shortly to come to a dramatic end.

Ötzi was not in the best of health; his backpack contained medicine and modern analysis of his body shows signs of frailty. Maybe others saw this as a chance to seize power. Discontent was clearly festering as Ötzi had suffered a cut to his hand just a day or so before he died. The few nicks on the edge of his axe-blade may have been as a result of this altercation although we shall never know whether he was using it as a weapon or as a symbol for his diminishing status. It seems likely that similar threats forced him to make that fateful journey into the mountains. Pollen layers in his gut show that he travelled through the low altitude hornbeam trees, moved up to a stand of high altitude pines, before doubling back and visiting the hornbeams again. Perhaps he was trying to elude his pursuers. It did not work. Eventually, and probably through sheer desperation, he followed a pass up into the mountains where an arrow, expertly aimed so that it cut an artery, caused him to bleed to death. Before he died, his assailant removed the arrow, perhaps to mask the tell-tale mark of his or her identity. To make sure Ötzi was truly dead, his assailant also struck him on the head. An ignominious end for an old man. Whoever killed him, and there may have been more than one involved, left Ötzi’s belongings, including his axe, where they lay. Again, this may have been a precaution to avoid later detection but perhaps the items were just too special and too closely bound to Ötzi that their removal could not be countenanced. Enough harm had been done that day. With the last of his strength, Ötzi seems to have reached out for his axe – even today, his arm remains stretched across his body – but it was not to be. Whether he realised the sacred object was still close by or not, it could do little for him and he died alone, frozen in time.

In a bizarre twist, Simon Helmut, the man who jointly found Ötzi on 19th September twenty years ago, shared the same fate as his sensational discovery. In October 2004, his dead body was recovered from the ice where it had been trapped, just like Ötzi’s had, so many years before.