Kind: captions
Language: en
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he's the oldest human specimen we have
that is so complete he's so well
preserved he continues to generate this
body of information he may well be the
most studied human being in
history the
ican he was found in a glaci frozen in
time for 5,000 years an ancient murder
mystery what can we learn from him what
is his story we figured he was probably
Italian wrong Eastern European North
African wrong wrong wrong where's this
guy from scientists search for answers
hidden in his genetic code we're
rewriting the history of
humankind as an artist brings him back
to life if they believe that it's real
then I've done my
job science and art join to share the
Iceman and his secrets with the world we
have to turn this thing from plastic to
flesh Iceman reborn right now on Nova
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in a custombuilt lab a team of doctors
suits up strict precautions are taken
okay because this is a very unusual
case the patient has been dead for over
5,000
years this is
uty the
Iceman one of the oldest and best
preserved intact human bodies ever
found the story of UT's Discovery is
still one of the most astounding in
human history
1991 on a 10,000 ft Glacier near the
border of Austria and Italy two hikers
come across the body of a
man face down in the
ice they have no idea the importance of
what they've stumbled upon perhaps it's
a mountaineer or even a lost soldier
from World War
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I but as they pull the remains from the
ice capturing the recovery on video
certain Clues point to a different
story a knife Made of
Stone a shoe made of
grass a quiver of
arrows leather
leggings a copper
axe carbon dating later reveals that the
body and the items found with it have
been preserved in the Mountain ice for
over 5,000
years uty becomes not only an
international sensation but also a
scientific
treasure he's the oldest human specimen
we have that is so complete so well
preserved with all the scientific
disciplines that are intrigued by him
that want answers he may well be the
most studied human being and
history now new technology is yielding
more clues revealing surprising secrets
about this mysterious Ancient Man and
the world he lived
in from the strange markings that cover
his body to the DNA in his
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bones researchers are trying to use his
genetic code to uncover his true Origins
to track down his relatives alive even
today and help solve long-standing
mysteries about how people lived at the
end of the Stone
Age he provides a window into what life
looked like 5,000 years ago in Europe so
it's kind of like finding the Ark of the
Covenant how important is that yeah it's
pretty
important the clues begin with uty
himself
at the time of his death he was about 45
years old 5'2 in tall weighing about10
lb new research deciphering UT's genetic
code reveals he had brown
eyes dark
hair and had both lime disease and a
predisposition to heart
disease but that's not what killed him
on the
Mountain at first it was thought that
the iceman had frozen to death in a
storm and been buried in the
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snow but a radiologist reviewing his
x-rays spotted something strange that
had escaped everyone else's
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notice an arrowhead Lo budg Deep In The
Iceman's shoulder the Arad was detected
in 2001 and then the question was did
the Arad kill him or
not CT or CAT scans of the body
revealing UT's internal anatomy in
amazing detail provided more clues We
Could reconstruct then the area where
the arrow entered the body and disrupted
a major artery of the left arm if you're
losing so much blood that maybe after 10
15 minutes you're
dead from this we knew that he was
killed by this arrow
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shot shot and left to die on the
mountain the mystery was
deepening who was
oy what did he do for a
living who were his
people and why was he killed
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the answers will not be easy to
find because UT's condition is so
delicate uty has spent years locked in a
freezer at the South Tyrone Museum of
archaeology his cell kept at a chilly
19° is designed to protect him from
potentially destructive
microbes no one no one enters the
sterile environment except UT's
doctors the Iceman is kept under sterile
condition in this Refrigeration cell and
that's why we have to take care who is
entering the cell because we want to
avoid that anybody brings in any kind of
contamination yeah ready
go today an exception has been made for
an artist named Gary
stab Gary has been charged with a
difficult mission to sculpt an exact
replica of the icean a copy that will be
accessible to researchers and to the
public who can't get close to the real
thing we cannot allow everybody entering
the cell who has maybe a certain
research question to inspect the mummy
we want to make a good copy people can
use to see to get very close to get data
which cannot be done with the original
Mommy it's always really a risk no
better think you 9 mm Gary has limited
time to take in all the details of this
rare and unique human body I'm soaking
in every single detail I can lay my eyes
on he must create the most accurate
replica possible 's twin bright index 5
mm he evaluates UT's skin tone and
texture the Keratin is falling off the
nail beds his distorted face that
cartilage is so so thin his ravaged hip
yes we have a very big defect of soft
tissues and Bone tissues because of the
damage this will be very difficult to
replicate in the process of getting
every detail just right Gary will have
to learn all he can about the Iceman and
his times how he lived died and became
mummified what is his story what can we
learn from him and how can he enrich our
understanding of the past okay very good
Dr Edward artter vagle calls an end to
Gary's visit any more thawing and the
Iceman could be in danger of bacterial
contamination absolutely
amazing so that was the fastest 30
minutes of my
life this very intimate moment with the
mummy will be very helpful in the final
product it'll be so much better because
of
that with uty Safe in His sterile Crypt
Gary will begin to bring his body double
to
life to start the CT scans that helped
determine UT's cause of death will
provide a detailed blueprint for The
Iceman's
twin thanks to a remarkable
technology 3D
printing uty will literally be printed
out in three
dimensions we use our software to
transform the CT images into a 3D model
that you can
print special software converts the data
into a stack of over 2,000 horizontal
slices creating a blueprint of UT's
body this is then fed into a computer
which controls a gigantic 5T by 18 ft
machine known as the mammoth they have
the ability to create the entire print
in one piece which is very very rare in
this enormous vat
350 gallons of liquid resin the
consistency of warm honey will be
transformed into a life-size plastic
model of the
Iceman the computer guides lasers around
a thin layer of liquid resin we use a
laser to trace out crosssections of udy
and under UV light the polymer starts to
harden
once it solidifies just a few seconds a
very thin layer is positioned on top of
it the laser hardens it out again and
this way the model is built layer by
layer for nearly 3 days the lasers
continue their work little by little
until every Small Bump and Hollow on the
surface of The Iceman's body is present
and accounted for so this is very
exciting we're using the newest
Technologies to three-dimensionally
print the oldest wet mummy ever
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found finally it's time to reveal the 3D
print oh my gosh this fantastic
transformed from liquid to solid the
face details are
beautiful that is absolutely
fantastic UT's body has been
reconstructed as one ex extremely
detailed Hollow piece of
plastic beautifully translucent but it
still captures all the forms and the
shapes
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lovely as the model emerges the icean is
reborn AI coming out of this resin was
kind of overwhelming because slowly his
face was revealed his feet were revealed
his rib cage it was super exciting to
know that that three dimensional print
was at such a high resolution you really
have something to work
with it is on this plastic oody that
Gary will sculpt the lifelike
version It's a treat to see it in one
color because there's nothing
distracting your eye I'm also looking at
anatomical features that correspond to
the structures that I saw in the
freezer while Gary reviews UT's plastic
form scientists continue to hunt down
clues about the Flesh and Blood
Man for Albert zinc who oversees
research on the mummy UT's CT scans are
especially
valuable because a look at UT's muscles
and Joints can tell us a lot about his
life and
lifestyle perhaps even how he made a
living the two main ways of life 5,300
years ago were farming and hunting and
Gathering we can reconstruct the muscles
the muscle structure how the muscles are
attached at the bones we just could
distract all these from the city scans
zinc notices uty did not show signs of
strain in his upper body muscles and
joints that might rule out farming in
this upper part in the shoulders in the
arms and hands there almost nothing and
for a man which was about 40 to 50 years
old in this time period we would EXP
expect some changes if he have worked
with his
hands the scans do indicate severe
damage in the muscles and joints of his
legs and back which suggests he was a
constant
traveler also the mummy's knee and hip
joints are missing a lot of their
cartilage a painful condition called
arthrosis a kind of arthritis caused by
wear and tear the physical effects of
the Iceman were that he had lower back
problems the same is true for the knee
we know he had some arthis of the knee
joints and this caused pain from time to
time uty died in the
mountains and he likely spent much of
his life there too we know from his
physical appearance that he was walking
a lot that he maybe was carrying some
heavy things so maybe he was trading
something could be that he was really
traveling a lot but we cannot really say
what was his role in
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society searching for even more evidence
about this enigmatic man scientists
perform a kind of autopsy on
boy they remove specimens from inside
his most culturally sensitive organ
stomach here his
stomach and they are able to extract
UT's last
meal eaten only hours before his death
death some of the contents point to uty
being a hunter so much material from the
stomach now he had wild Ibex meat in his
stomach so he's clearly hunting for part
of his sustenance he also had I corn
wheat I corn wheat has to come from
forming it's this classical kind of
interesting
mystery UT is sending us mixed messages
about how he's living his
life in addition to food researchers
also found different kinds of pollen in
the ican's stomach this revealed that
uty had been traveling up and down the
mountain within the last 48 hours of his
life uty seems to have been a man on the
Move whose Adventures came to a violent
end more than 5,000 years later UT's
twin
is on a journey of its own across the
Atlantic Ocean all the way to Carney
Missouri in the American
Heartland here Gary stab brings ancient
fossils back to
life he is a Master model
maker and over the years he has been
commissioned to build replicas of dozens
of extinct
creatures for museums around the world
he has fashioned prehistoric fish
sculpted life-sized dinosaurs and
crafted giant
crocodiles I've spent entirely way too
much time on the inside of large animals
from the miniature to the Monstrous
whether it swims crawls or flies Gary's
job is to resurrect the long dead so the
fascinating fact is that 99% of all life
that has ever existed on earth is
extinct so I follow floods I follow
volcanic eruptions Mass death events I'm
a bit of an amance Chaser but I'm just a
little bit
late maybe a few thousand years
late in some cases 50 or 60 million
years
late Gary's investigations all to better
understand his subjects and the worlds
they lived in have taken him around the
globe from exotic excavation sites to
ancient fossil Fields most of the time
my job is to sculpt animals for museums
and we only have their bones we only
have fossils so I have to take something
that no one is exactly sure what it
looked like and try and breathe life
into
it this is a neat situation we know
exactly what Iceman looks like so my job
is to replicate him exactly as he looks
right
now what's in
here now Gary faces one of the biggest
challenges of his
career creating the exact replica of
utsy the ican all right it's like
Neolithic
Christmas the plastic model generated by
the 3D printer has just arrived in his
Studio it was an amazing feeling to
finally lift him out of the crate and
take him onto the table by the time
we're finished where we'll work
thousands of hours 3D printing techn
ology has provided the artist with a
good head
start a model with physical dimensions
exact to the
millimeter it's a perfect match to the
shape of the Iceman but the surface of
the model is not detailed enough to
create a believable
replica so we've got a lot of work ahead
of us Gary and his team will need to
sculpt uty the old-fashioned
way all by hand
there's not one centimeter of this thing
that isn't
complicated it is going to be very
hard it will be a four-part process
sculpting molding painting and crafting
minute surface details will take Gary
and his team months to complete the
challenges are many we have not only the
elements of the skin texture we have the
detail of the face we have the detail of
the hands and we have to figure out how
to replicate the hips cuz the hip is
going to be very challenging to
do you guys start on this end and work
your way up and I'll start on the head
and then I'll meet you somewhere in the
middle I hope the first step darken the
mummy's body to better reveal the exact
Contours of the 3D print we can't
actually read the surface when it's
translucent so we take a a very dark and
penetrating stain and we paint it over
the top of the three-dimensional print
that allows us to see the surface in a
much better way so we can read those
shapes and then actually make judgments
on how we're going to sculpt the surface
based on what we
see there are thousands of
considerations not hundreds thousands of
considerations that have to be taken
into account for while you're doing this
next Gary replicates UT's skin with a
especially valuable modeling
clay as the Thin clay bonds to the resin
Gary and his team sculpt every detail of
the mummy's surface texture inch by
inch getting UT's skin just right is one
of the main challenges for Gary and his
crew we have to turn this thing from
plastic to
flesh human skin is actually an organ
the largest we have on average it takes
about 20 square ft of skin to cover a
human body
it will take hundreds of hours to
replicate 's complex mummified
surface pick out some of these that
might work well and then run some
samples Gary relies on texture pads to
press patterns into UT's clay skin I
have hundreds of Textures in a box I
pulled them out to see which ones might
match these flexible rubber patches
create varied imprints on the wet
clay human skin has three layers the
epidermis or outer layer acts as a
waterproof wrapping and a guard against
infection it also determines our skin
color the next layer the dermis is made
up of tough connective tissue along with
nerve endings hair follicles and sweat
glands finally the Deep hypodermis
consists of subcutaneous fat and more
connective tissue
Gary and his team are sculpting the
second layer of UT's skin the dermis
most of the outer layer was lost to the
mountain if you look at the skin of this
mmy you have to realize that this body
has been lying in ice for years the ice
isn't always stable so in summer the ice
melts into
water if it's in water for too long the
upper layer of the skin the dermis
separates and you lose it the layers
underneath the dermis and the
subcutaneous layer remain
preserved also a lot of hair fingernails
and toenails have been
lost enough of The Iceman's skin along
with soft tissue and muscle has been
preserved to make uty a true mummy for
Gary uty is not the first mummy he has
replicated but certainly one of the most
unique mummies can be created naturally
or
artificially artificial mummies like
those from ancient Egypt were made by
intentionally blocking the decaying
process the important thing during
mumification is that it happens
immediately so the natural process is
the degradation the decomposition of a
body so it has to be stopped
immediately this was the case for one of
the most famous mummies of PA the
Egyptian pharaoh King tutan common he
was embalmed and then coated in a black
resin-like liquid that encased and
preserved his
skin but in natural mummies like uty or
those discovered on mountaintops in the
Andes or bog bodies found buried in Pete
the environment alone preserves the body
the Iceman is a natural Mummy he was
naturally captured in the ice and he's
also a humid mummy so he still contains
some water in his tissue that makes him
also so difficult to
preserve it is luck that uty was
preserved at
all he was nearly lost
forever fortunately his body lay in a
small trench protected by large rocks on
two sides this trench eventually filled
in with 10 ft of snow and ice preventing
the Iceman from being swept into the
deadly Frozen current that flowed around
it this makes him also quite unique he's
one of the few ice mummies that exists
at all and he's the only Natural Ice
mummy we have in the Alpine
region the ice preserved uty but the
great weight of the glacier eventually
flattened his body creating the ultra
lean frame that Gary is now
duplicating after weeks of work the
replica is covered in a layer of white
clay that matches the texture of UT's
body but in order for Gary to finish the
face he must remove UT's head it's much
easier to sculp away from the body so
you have to bring it to where you can
focus get exactly in his Zone where
physically you can work on it for that
length of time and not get Ultra
fatigued UT's face presents a particular
challenge this will be the thing that
everyone looks at they'll engage it in
the face in the eyes and that's where
they will spend most of their time this
is where he will become a person to
them he has a really wild looking face
it's a a bit grotesque in some ways his
lip is actually pushed up here because
he was laying face down on a rock and
that pressure on his face and over his
nose the nose is so difficult to tease
out the details of what's actually
happening there you know what am I
actually seeing what is what's doing
what so that it can be
correct it's entirely possible I'll know
his face better than his mother
did after months of sculpting molding
and crafting the exact details of the
Iceman Gary has reached the most visible
stage in in his
process I'm at a very exciting
point the paint finally I can actually
put color
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on painting is a very fun part of this
process and it's very fun to see this
come to life through color from the rims
of his eyes to the tips of his toes Gary
must match every inch of UT's skin to
the
original including the mummy's
mysterious
markings many sets of parallel
lines and two
crosses these are UT's
tattoos the Iceman is the oldest
tattooed mummy ever discovered it's
complicated because there's so many yes
we discovered a lot of tattoos
researcher maros Deli has been one of
UT's caretakers for nearly 20 years how
did you catalog each one of these
recently Marco set out to inventory
every tattoo on UT's skin we discovered
exactly 61 tattoos that's a lot of
ink it is difficult to see the tattoos
on a 5,000 yearold
mommy Marco's research revealed
something no one had ever seen before
thanks to a unique camera sensitive to
invisible
light multispectral Imaging is a
technique used to see what the eye can't
see it's with this technique we
discovered every single detail even
under the surface of the Mammy
skin the exact number and location of
all the tattoos was a mystery until
we discovered a tattoo that had never
been seen
before four parallel lines on the right
side of his
chest we were able to see all his
tattoos and obtain a complete
mapping 61 tattoos arranged in 19 groups
across his
body archaeologist Aon deer wolf studies
the use of tattoos in ancient cultures
tattooing has been practiced throughout
a huge portion of human history going
back at least 16 or 18,000 years before
present during that time period people
have been tattooed for all sorts of
different reasons depending on their
culture and the region in which they
lived Aaron has come to Gary's Studio to
demonstrate how and why he believes UT's
tattoos may have been made we're going
to take a piece of pig skin which is a
proxy for human skin canvas we're going
to use these reproduction tools to
tattoo that skin in the same patterns
that are on ot's body Aaron thinks UT's
tattoos were most likely created with a
technique that was widespread in the
ancient world by using a sharp needle
probably made from bone to puncture the
skin and push ink made from charcoal
into the tiny shallow
wounds what you want to do is just dip
the tip of the tool and then you're just
to go in very very
shallowly microscopic and chemical
analysis reveals that the dark lines are
made primarily of carbon along with bits
of silica a composition most likely
collected around the edge of a campfire
so what kind of depth less than a mill
less than a millimeter you can feel the
skin give underneath the needle a little
tiny pop that's moving through that
epidermis yep I thought it would be a
little bit easier but it takes hundreds
of and hundreds of punctures to actually
get a solid
line I am using the exact same stabbing
technique with a brush on the model
looking at how difficult it was to
create those tattoos on pig skin imagine
the pain that oie had to go through when
he had his tattoos
made I I wouldn't get a tattoo that
way so why would uty endure this painful
process not just once but dozens of
times we generally agree that 's tattoos
don't seem on the whole to be decorative
or symbolic for Aaron and other experts
a key clue to understanding the purpose
of the tattoos could be where they've
been
placed a number of UT's tattoos seem to
correspond to areas where he suffered
from ailments or
injuries he had arthritis in his lower
back and there are tattoos on his lower
lar area he had arthritis in his right
knee there are tattoos on the back of
his right knee he had arthritis in his
ankles there are a number of tattoos
around both his right and left ankles
most recently this new set of tattoos is
located on his lower right abdomen among
the many ailments that he suffered from
was gall stones and whipworms in his
colon and this is a place that is very
close to those areas and could
potentially have been used to treat the
pains he was is experiencing tattooing
the skin to alleviate pain has been the
practice of many
cultures there are therapeutic tattoo
Traditions that have been documented all
across the world in in India in
Southeast Asia North America in the
American
Arctic UT's tattoos are the earliest
direct evidence of this ancient
tradition but the tattoos may not have
been the only medicinal treatment uty
relied on
in the woods of Upstate New York
archaeologist Patrick Hunt is tracking
down wild
mushrooms with the help of David work an
expert in fungi they're hunting for two
varieties the same ones that uty carried
with him 5300 years
ago this is very much like the forests
that uty would have known in the Ty roll
where you've got mixed deciduous forests
wow that's a beautiful
example could probably roll this
over maybe
not if you're carrying two different
mushrooms you must have a pretty good
idea they address different
functions one mushroom known as Tinder
fungus is often used to start fires when
dried it ignites easily and burns for a
long time the other kind of fungus which
uty carries on leather straps is called
Birch polypore I'm going to harvest this
one most believe uty was carrying this
particular mushroom for another reason
this white it's antiseptic power you can
also take this mushroom peel off the
Spore layers and you can put that
directly on a wound that's antibacterial
it's antiviral here I have a cut there
and we'll put that there and and you
could actually tie it around around with
a piece of
grass and Band-Aid you don't need
bacterial agents cuz it's got it in the
mushroom it's already there so pretty
cool in addition to the topical
treatment uty may have ingested the
mushroom as a kind of stone AG
painkiller The Peculiar thing is it has
the exact properties that act as
remedies to what uty had wrong with him
it's been used in modern periods for
some of these same
functions but UT is the oldest case on
record for anybody knowing
this we thought that this was a
relatively modern Discovery obviously
it's been around for a long
time as uty continues to challenge
scientists and historians to revive
their picture of the
past Gary stob is facing his own
challenge in the Reconstruction of the
mummy's body Gary knew it would be a
problem ever since his day in the
freezer The Iceman's damaged hip perhaps
molded by an animal scavenger after 's
death it's clear that the animals go to
this part of the body Scavenging because
it's an big attraction for the animal
the hip is very very complicated in fact
it's almost as complicated as making the
entire mummy on its own while Gary's
Studio team makes hundreds of simulated
tendons from natural fibers that are
frayed and dipped in paraffin Gary
builds UT's ravaged
backside because included in the
complexity of this there's dried muscle
overlaid by tendons then you have frayed
tendons up against bone the bone itself
the cancellus bone or the bone marrow
inside of the bone that's fractured and
torn apart and then you have the soft
tissues that overlay the bone on this
side you've got lower bowel intestine
that's exposed and broken with bowel
stomach contents inside of it and then
you have fat deposition in here so just
this section alone has that many
different finishes that have to be
replicated so this is by far the most
complicated project I've ever worked on
it will take weeks to sculpt The
Iceman's injured
hip meanwhile scientists continue to
search for UT's true
identity investigating perhaps the most
revealing evidence available Iceman's
genetic code genetics is giving us
insights that we cannot get through any
other means the genetic blueprint of
every living thing is written in
DNA it's made of four chemicals
abbreviated as a c g and
T these four letters in a twisting
double helix are arranged into 23 pairs
of chromosomes within each
cell this is our biological code
containing all the information to build
and run our
bodies uty was one of the first ancient
Europeans to have his entire code or
genome
analyzed it provided detailed Clues to
his appearance and health if you look at
a particular gene on chromosome 15 it's
the gene that most likely determines eye
color if you see a pair of G's at this
position that likely means that the
person has blue eyes whereas in the case
of uty we see an a from both parents and
so that likely means that he had dark
colored eyes on another chromosome
number 12 two two T's indicate that his
hair was also
dark other chromosomes reveal new
details uty had blood type O he even had
a predisposition for
arteriosclerosis heart disease often
assumed to be associated with our modern
Lifestyle the team also found DNA
fragments from the microbe that causes
lime disease
making uty the earliest known
case but what about his Origins who were
UT's ancestors the very cool thing about
DNA is that changes in DNA literally
make us who we are the material that we
inherit from our mom and our dad links
us to all of our ancestors and by
comparing DNA across individuals and
populations we can get a very rich
picture of our ancestry who are we
related to where did they come
from finding answers is especially
important because utzi dates to around
the time when prehistoric Europe was
undergoing major
changes as the ancient hunter gatherer
lifestyle was gradually displaced by
farming oy comes from an incredibly
important period in European history
where we go from hunter gatherers living
in Europe to the widespread adoption of
farming because it's a transitional time
period in which uty lives there are huge
life waves that converge whether people
are hunter gatherers or whether they're
early
farmers he's in transition his culture
is in
transition 45,000 years ago modern
humans first began arriving in
Europe they were hunter gatherers
foraging plants and hunting wild
game then about 7,000 years ago
everything began to
change people in Europe began to
cultivate crops for
food and by about 5,000 years ago the
hunter gatherer culture had almost
completely disappeared from the
continent
it is one of the most revolutionary
transformations in human
history where does uty fit into this
changing
landscape did he come from a group of
ancient hunter gatherers who still lived
in Pockets throughout Europe or were his
people Farmers living a more settled
life in the foothills of the
alpes scientists turn turn to UT's
prehistoric artifacts for more
insight when you excavate or find
someone who died 5,000 years
ago usually all you have left are the
bones what is so fantastic about uty is
that because he was found in a
glacier because he was frozen in time
for 5,000 plus
years everything Sur R his
clothes his
tools among the items recovered from the
glacier were a fur hat Patchwork
leggings made of leather deer skin shoes
stuffed with
hay a 6t
longbow a quiver that held over a dozen
arrows if you want an arrow shaft you
want the woods that he chose Cornell and
viburnum they grow very straight they're
easily harvested they're fairly prolific
his expertly made weapons seem well
suited for a man who hunted for his
meals but other objects paint a
different picture UT's finely crafted
copper axe one of the oldest metal tools
ever found in Europe points to a more
advanced Society one based on farming
could The Iceman's DNA help solve the
mystery and determine whether UT's
people were hunter gatherers or
Farmers to find out researchers focus on
mutations in the DNA random mistakes
that can occur when the billions of
chemicals that make up our genetic code
all those A's T's G's and C's get
copied the human genome is 3 billion
base pairs long every once in a while
you get a
mutation and that mutation sometimes
ends up
spreading these mutations help create
specific patterns of genetic variation
in our DNA inherited from our
parents the closer two people are
related the more of these patterns
they'll have in
common so whose DNA does uty match best
the hunter gatherers or the
Farmers the only way to get at that was
to have other ancient samples from known
farmers and known hunter gatherers from
across Europe across different points in
time they found the sample DNA in the
bones of dozens of ancient people
excavated from archaeological sites all
over Europe some samples go back
45,000 years when hunting was the only
way of life other samples were from
7,000 year old farming
sites and the result UT's DNA is a close
match to that of ancient
Farmers not hunter
gatherers it became pretty clear that
all of the individuals that we had
labeled archaeologically as farmers were
closest to
buty 's DNA reveals that he was
descended from farmers who were in
Europe nearly 2,000 years before he was
born what's more the same DNA patterns
show up in even older bones found in
some of the earliest known farming sites
in the world in what is today turkey
this suggests that farmers migrated to
Europe from Turkey filling much of the
continent eventually they pushed aside
most of the hunter gatherers and their
DNA so where is UT's DNA now could he
have distant relatives alive even
today comparing his genome to Modern DNA
samples from all over Europe would
provide the
answer who uty really was genetically
surprised us when we started to
analyzing lety we figured ah he was
probably
Italian wrong didn't cluster with the
Italians maybe he's
Austrian wrong he didn't cluster with
the austrians Eastern European wrong
North African wrong wrong
wrong so where's this guy from and it
turned out much to our surprise that his
closest living relatives were on the
island of
Sardinia totally
unexpected does this mean that uty was
Sardinian not
necessarily most likely 5,300 years ago
when the Iceman was born most people in
Europe including
sardinians carried similar patterns in
their DNA from the early farmer
immigrants but over the last 5,000 years
Europe has seen wave after wave of new
immigrants
adding new patterns of DNA to the mix
except on the isolated island of
Sardinia there ever since the early
farmers arrived the inhabitants and
their DNA pattern have stayed relatively
stable this wave of farmers that swept
through Europe made us to Sardinia and
stayed there as a genetic snapshot of
what that wave of immigration looked
like this makes today's sardinians UT's
closest living
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relatives over the past 5 months here at
Gary studio in Missouri the iceman has
undergone a complicated
transformation if they look at this and
they believe that it's real then I've
done my job and we want only oaty to be
the final product it's just about
ootsy before the model is finished its
accuracy will be put to the ultimate
test so good to see you when Albert zinc
who oversees the institute for mummies
and the Iceman in Italy comes to examine
Gary's
work I'm absolutely petrified he's here
to see this because he is the the person
who's the most familiar with the
mummy my goal is to have him for one
second be fooled that maybe he's
actually looking at
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oie I have to tell you something it's
it's really good it's a really good work
now I'm really very impressed it's
really really amazing that's good wow
some moments I felt that the momm is
outside of his Frieza so dangerous but
then I realized it's the
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replica you managed to give him this
kind of expression that you still can
feel somehow that this was a human being
somebody who lived very long go it's
really a
masterpiece this is great for Scholars
because with this replica you can really
explore it much more detail in
combination with all the other data we
have I think this will bring us also a
step forward in our
research with Albert zinc's approval the
time has come for Gary to share the
replica with the world all right wow
he's brought udy to New York Cold Spring
Harbor laboratory one of the world's
foremost genetic research
institutes for Gary it's like dropping a
child off at the first day of school I'm
a little bit nervous it's been a really
long road and it's a lot of work
culminating with this
day for many years the director of Cold
Spring Harbor was James Watson
co-discoverer of DNA's double helix it's
remarkable it was very exciting to get
DNA from 5,000 years
ago uty could never have known that how
he lived and died would Intrigue and
Inspire future Generations looks like
he's like looking at like these students
some of whom have been studying him for
years AI is a great example of how DNA
can help us learn about the past he's
awesome coolest dead guy in the
world what's incredible about the udy
story is that as Technology's gotten
better and better it's the gift that
keeps on giving we can keep going back
to this sample and it yields new
Mysteries and new insight into both
human history and into what
himself oy was a man on the moon until
an arrow ended his journey through
life but his death on the mountain would
ultimately take him much farther than he
could ever have
imagine and make him one of the most
famous and fascinating humans who ever
walked the Earth
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[Applause]
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