Book dossier

Mann im Eis

by Konrad Spindler

In 1991 The world was electrified by the chance discovery of the body of a man trapped in a glacier in the Otztaler Alps on the Austrian-Italian border. The corpse was almost perfectly preserved. Preliminary tests showed that this was the body of a Neolithic hunter who died some 5,300 years ago. The results of further investigations have been awaited with great excitement throughout the world. In The Man in the Ice, Dr. Konrad Spindler, the leader of an international team of scientists investigating the body, makes the results public for the first time - and totally refutes arguments that have challenged its authenticity. The Man in the Ice, scientifically accurate and detailed, is also a mesmerizing detective story. The pieces of equipment found with the body, in an extraordinary state of preservation, provide fascinating clues to the nature of daily life in the Stone Age. What, for example, can we learn about the area he inhabited from the charcoal in the container he carried? How were his bows, arrows, dagger, and axe made? Then there is the body itself, a treasure trove of information: microorganisms, parasites, hair, teeth, broken bones. Finally, what was the "ice man" doing in such an inhospitable and dangerous alpine region, so far from any human settlement - and how did he die?