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 the ice for several thousand years. His body was discovered in 1991 by two hikers in the mountains near the border of Austria in 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 5,300(53 hundred) years ago. This was at the end of Stone Age, nearly one thousand 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 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 5 thousand years ago.
The Iceman lived at the end of 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 settled in towns and conforming communities. These communities was 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 the battle with outsiders.
