You may not remember Otzi, because he is slightly older than you. He died just 5,300 years ago. He seemed to like wearing quite a fashionable set of clothes, going by his wardrobe.
Otzi was an iceman who has also become a scientific celebrity, because his body got frozen in the Otzpal Alps when it was found in September 1991.
Recently, by employing complex DNA techniques, experts could locate the material in all that he was wearing at the time---right from his hat to his leggings, jacket, loincloth, shoes, shoelaces, along with a grass cloak, quiver, and tools. The materials were complicated enough to throw some light on the Copper Age, his era.
Even though the material is old, with very few traces, some remains of wild animals on them have been discovered. Hence, his hat seemed to hint of brown bear fur, and his quiver of deer hide. Experts earlier thought that Otzi did not hunt too much because he had already domesticated animals by that time.
However, the clothes did show that he had to hunt occasionally in order to use animal patches in order to make his clothes. They were made with a mix of cow, sheep, and goat hide. It is clear that though he was a farmer, he also hunted. When the animal DNA of his era was compared to the present domesticated animals, they seemed to be very close.
"Most of the clothes were composed of cattle, sheep, and goat," says study lead author Niall J. O'Sullivan, a PhD candidate at University College Dublin and the EURAC-Institute for Mummies and the Iceman in Italy.
"This affirms previous observations about the Iceman," he said. "He was indeed an agro-pastoralist."
So far, scientists have pieced together a lot of interesting details about Otzi. He was a tattooed man and has 19 living relatives who share his genetic material today. His last meal was a goat, and he died of a head wound at 40 years----most probably he was the victim of a murder mystery.
Now that his farming and animal husbandry is also clear, we know that he came from a society that was more complex than we thought.
