The South Tyrol Museum became the center of Ötzi science. Eurac Research, an independent research center in Bolzano with an Institute for Mummy Studies specifically focused on the iceman, became one of the two main institutional homes for the genomic work that would reshape the picture over the following decades.
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## Who Was He? The Physical Evidence
Before the DNA, the physical body and the objects found with it told a substantial story. That story has been built out through decades of forensic, medical, and archaeological analysis, and it remains the foundation on which the genomic evidence sits.
Ötzi was approximately forty-five years old at death. He was about 160 centimeters tall and weighed roughly fifty kilograms. His lean build, combined with isotopic evidence from his teeth and bones, suggested a life of substantial physical activity in the Alpine environment — movement between valleys and high passes, the kind of work that would have kept a Copper Age farmer and herder lean and strong.
His teeth told part of his story. Tooth-enamel isotope analysis — comparing the ratios of strontium and other elements in the enamel with those found in soil and water across different regions — pointed to a childhood near the village of Feldthurns in what is now South Tyrol. His later movements appear to have taken him to valleys roughly fifty kilometers to the north of his likely birthplace.
He had sixty-one tattoos, arranged in nineteen groups on his body, made by rubbing soot or charcoal into small incisions in the skin. The tattoos were not primarily decorative in placement: nine of the nineteen groups sit on or near locations that correspond to classical acupuncture points, and several of the most tattooed areas correspond to joints — knees, ankles — where he showed signs of degenerative wear. Some researchers have proposed that the tattoos were therapeutic, applied to relieve pain from arthritic or overuse conditions, though this interpretation remains debated.