One of the most interesting people in history is probably someone you have never heard of.
We will call him "Iceman" because his body was frozen in ice for several thousand years.
His body was discovered in 1991 by two hikers in the mountains near the border of Austria and Italy.
The lower part of his body was still frozen in ice, but the upper part was uncovered and visible.
Once the body was extracted from the ice, it was taken in for examination.
Upon examination, scientists determined that the Iceman lived around 5300 years ago.
This was at the end of the Stone Age, nearly 1000 years before the great pyramids were built.
This made him the oldest mummy ever found.
Iceman's body was in good condition when it was found.
People believed that the body was one of many hikers who had been lost in recent years.
Nobody suspected that the body was as old as it was.
It had been preserved by the ice for thousands of years.
Given its good condition, studying it was like opening a window in time.
Scientists could learn a lot about how people lived 5000 years ago.
The Iceman lived at the end of the Stone Age, a time of great change in human history.
Hunting was still a major source of food, but people were beginning to farm.
People were settling down and forming communities.
These communities were claiming territory and setting up boundaries.
As a result, sometimes they had to fight to defend their territory from outsiders.
The village where the Iceman lived was probably not far from where he died.
Perhaps he was killed in a battle with outsiders.
(It was in good condition because it had been preserved by the ice.)
