2023-08-16 18:59:23
Prehistoric Iceman Ötzi had darker skin than previously assumed and likely advanced baldness, according to a study published Wednesday by the Max Planck Institute for Anthropology in Leipzig.
The analysis of the genome of the most famous mummy in Europe, over 5000 years old, also establishes that its ancestors were from Anatolia, adds the German institute, which carried out the study in collaboration with the Eurac Mummy Research Institute in Bolzano, Italy.
AgencyQMI
As a mature man, his age at the time of his death being estimated at around 45, Ötzi probably no longer had long, thick hair, but very sparse hair.
Its genes show a predisposition to baldness, which could also explain “why we found almost no hair on the mummy”, explains the co-author of the report, Albert Zink, of the Eurac institute.
Also, researchers have until now believed that the mummy’s skin darkened while it was stored in ice. But it’s likely to be “largely Ötzi’s original skin color,” Zink said.
Its genome had already been deciphered in 2012, but the researchers used improved sequencing methods to refine the analysis, according to the study.
Ötzi thus presents, compared to her European contemporaries, an unusually high genetic percentage of the first immigrant farmers of Anatolia, she indicates.
The researchers deduce that he came from a relatively isolated Alpine population, with little contact with other European groups.
AFP
Today’s Europeans are essentially descended from a mixture of genes from three groups: the first hunter-gatherers of Western Europe gradually merged with the first farmers who migrated from the Near East around 8000 years ago. And the steppe shepherds of Eastern Europe came to add to it about 4900 years ago.
The genetic traces of this steppe population found in the Ötzi gene pool during the first analyzes were not confirmed by the new study.
The sample used then had been stained with modern DNA.
“We were very surprised to find no trace of the Eastern European Steppe Shepherds in the new Ötzi genome, and the proportion of hunter-gatherer genes is also very low,” says researcher Johannes Krause. to Max Planck and co-author of the study.
“Genetically, it seems that his ancestors came directly from Anatolia,” he adds.
Ötzi was discovered in 1991 in a glacier in the Italian Alps. His discovery was a sensation and since then scientists have been trying to trace his life using the most modern techniques.
AgencyQMI
According to current knowledge, he was just under 1.60 m tall, weighed around 50 kilos and was murdered with an arrow. His last meal before his death was most likely dried ibex meat.
His body is kept in a cold room at the Archaeological Museum of Alto Adige, in Bolzano, and is a real tourist magnet for the small Alpine town.
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