Note: the following transcript is a radio script and contains audio cues and other quirks (including imperfect grammar) of the medium. It may contain typos.
In the fall of 1991, an older German couple from Nuremberg were hiking in the Otztal Alps. Their names were Helmut and Erika. They were about 10,000 feet up the east ridge of Finielspietze - a mountain that straddles the border between Italy and Austria. A good haul to get up there - and cold in September. They had decided to take a shortcut, off the trail and through a gully strewn ice and water, and jagged rocks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_X-i5ke2hso
5 - And they saw something coming out of the ice, and they weren’t sure what it is… and then they realized it was a human body.
The voice you’re hearing belongs to Albert Zink… he’s told this story many times, and you’ll find out why soon enough.
11 - TQ How much of him was sticking out? Albert Zink: The upper body was more or less popping out of the ice. He was a bit bended over a rock so you couldn’t see the legs very well.
The body was face down. Hairless, with a bony ridge of spine descending into the snow. Unevenly colored skin - like full grain leather. He was naked - or half naked anyway. But that doesn’t mean he was empty handed.
10 - A coat, a fur coat, one shoe still attached to his foot. There was an arrow, and arrows… a quiver.. there was a bow. And a little knife with a stone blade.
Helmut wanted to take a picture. They were heading towards the next stop on their journey - another alpine hut. But Erika disagreed. She was superstitious.
12: Albert Zink: She said to us you cannot make a photograph of a dead body, that’s something you cannot do. But he said I have to documentate it, it’s an important thing for verification when we go to the hut... otherwise nobody will believe us, what we have found.
[music out]
6 - They actually made one photograph, it was in the time when they had analog cameras… so essentially the last photograph they took this picture.
[theme mux]
Since its discovery, the body that Helmut and Erika found has become one of the most famous corpses of all time. It’s been poked, prodded, sampled, subjected to advanced forensic testing… and today we know more about the man in the ice than you could possibly imagine.
Who was he? And what kind of secrets might he be keeping?
I’m Taylor Quimby.
And this is Patient Zero.
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It took four days for rescue teams to carve the man out from under the ice, and fly him off the mountain. The body was under meltwater during the day, and frozen solid at night. Two men used a pneumatic drill to try and free him… eventually, switching to ice picks and poles… his equipment was packed up and brought down the slopes. And they accidentally tore into the flesh of his hip, trying to pry him out. But eventually, he was freed.
8 - Albert Zink: Yeah hew was brought to the forensic department in Innsbruck, university.
13 - The forensic doctors treated this as an unknown dead body, and unknown corpse… and they made their investigation and they were close to lets say discard the mummy or bury the mummy because they said we don’t have any indication for the identity, looks like it died several decades ago. So it’s not maybe really a forensic case to look for a murder or anything like this.
Just to lay out the absurdity of this… some forensic doctors were brought a mummified corpse, complete with a stone knife, clothes made of animal furs and a handmade bow and arrow… and they were thinking… well, at least we don’t need to look for who killed him.
Fortunately… before they buried or cremated the ice man… the real experts got involved.
14 - Archeologist he came to the forensic department, he saw the equipment and he immediately said stop, this is something very very important. Must be at least at that time 4000 years old.
[mux swell, then bring under]
The body of the man was so well preserved, doctors had no idea they were looking at one of the oldest human mummies ever discovered… it took an archeologist looking at his tools, to recognize the style of the Copper Age.
38 - TQ: I don’t want to sound presumptuous, but I would think that the bow and the quiver and the axe would’ve been a dead giveaway that it was a very old body. Albert Zink: Yeah, you would think it would be strange that they didn’t realize…Yeah that’s true.
[mux swell and fade]
21 - His name is Otzi. At least this is the name he is called, because obviously as the forensic doctor said we didn’t find the passport [Journalist gave him a name - but also Iceman. or Frozen Fritz.
At this point, it’s probably worth telling you who Albert Zink is: he’s the head of the Institute for Mummy Studies, which was founded with the sole purpose of gleaning every bit of information possible from this amazing archaeological find. Let me say that again: after finding this body, an entire institute was founded to do research on him. It now has over 400 scientists… and yes… it’s research scope has expanded beyond Otzi and Otzi alone… but that’s how it started.
Albert Zink is one of a select few that have actually… and I”m sorry if this is weird, but actually touched… a 5,000 year old corpse.
4 - Albert Zink: It’s quite interesting because I used to work with a lot of mummies… mainly Egyptian mummies, and they’re all very stiff because they’re completely dried out. And he’s still soft when he’s not frozen, so it’s really quite different than many other mummies I’ve seen.
TQ: What’s it feel like, leather?
AZ: Yeah, leather. Bit soft, humid leather… could be compared to that.
Back when Otzi was first found though, Albert was still in grad school. And the investigative team that took over studying the body in the 90s was still covering the basics…. using some tried and true forensic science.
16 - First they made radiographs… and also computer timography. These are non-invasive techniques so you can have a look inside... see how he was preserved… And then they tried to figure out the age. The sex was quite obvious from external inspection.
TQ: You mean that they could see his genatalia?
Albert Zink:Yeah exactly. You still can see it, also today. They’re a bit… well … obviously also desiccated but quite easily identifiable. I’m always saying, it’s not a surprise that 5,000 years in the ice they are quite small.
From here, they started putting Otzi through the forensic ringer… conducting every test they could safely do, without further damaging his ancient body.
36 - First we did a bone biopsy… because it was exposed, it was damaged.
17 - Samples from intestines, from the lungs, from the thorax.
37 - But we also got bacterial DNA, DNA from things he ate…
They were able to tell from Otzi’s tissue samples th at the was 40 to 50 years old when he died. They could guess at his approximate build… and they could see that the mountain where he was found was not simply his final resting place… it was a crime scene.
24 - We know he was murdered, he was killed from an arrow shot from behind.
But most fascinating to me, was the detailed health profile they were able to work up… We know more about Otzi’s health, than we do the millions of uninsured Americans who haven’t gotten a check-up in how ever many years. For instance…
26 - We found several pathological conditions in the iceman… he had a lot of degenerative disease in his legs and his hip joints…
Otzi had lower back problems, perhaps from walking up and down the mountains for his work. He had intestinal parasites… and another bacteria in his belly…
27 - Stomach pathogen, helibactor pallori…
Helibactor pallori by the way, is what gives people….
28 - Gastritis, or stomach ulcer.
But hey - you guys already knew that, didn’t you!
[pepto?}
Scientists were also surprised to find that he had genetic predisposition to heart disease…
29 - He also had some arterial calcification…
Which was unusual, given that we consider that to be a largely modern day problem. Plus, for a mummy, Otzi was pretty in shape.
30 - Very active, walked a lot, not overweight, a non-smoker - as far as we know.
They were even able to reconstruct Otzi’s last few meals… by cataloguing the contents of his preserved stomach.
19 - Lot of meat… .identify meat fibers inside… Some let’s say botanical residues… and closer examination we could see the meat was coming from mainly from the alpine ibex … so the ibex that lives in the high alps... also some indication for red deer meat.
They also found early forms of wheat - Otzi wasn’t afraid of carbs, apparently - and one big surprise… traces of bracken fern: A poisonous plant that Otzi likely would have known to avoid, given his lifestyle.
20 - But on the other hand you can use this treat intestinal parasites. We know from previous studies… so maybe he was using this as a form of medicine to fight these pathogens.
TQ: Hmm!
[mux post]
And then, one of the biggest finds… or at least, one that’s gotten a whole lot of press attention… has to do with a little ol’ spirochete called Borrelia Burgdorferi.
[Nova Clip] - They also found the DNA fragments of the microbe that causes Lyme Disease. Making Utzi the earliest known case… https://youtu.be/7GdukyopnHg?t=2335
The connection between ice man and Lyme Disease was widely reported in February of 2012. And since then, it’s been written about and referenced in dozens of articles… It’s routinely trotted out in materials about tick-borne illness, and by advocacy organizations… and Why not? It’s a great story: pointing to the longevity and tenacity of this particular pathogen: the first case of Lyme. Patient Otzi.
But like so many things having to do with Lyme Disease, the reality behind Patient Otzi’s posthumous diagnosis isn’t what it seems. All sorts of people reported on the findings that Otzi had Lyme Disease… but as far as I can tell, nobody reported on it when Albert and his colleagues cautiously corrected the record.
39 - We talked a lot to colleagues because they were all very interested in our findings…
34 - And then we had to say, well we found Borrelia… the genus, the family of this bacteria. But we don’t have clear evidence of Borrelia Burgdorferi, so we cannot say for sure he had Lyme Disease. It’s still possible. Still hope to analyze this more in detail, but at the moment it will have to be a bit more cautious in this interpretation.
The DNA found in the Iceman belong to Borrelia… but remember, there are 52 known species of Borrelia… and less than half of those belong to the group that causes Lyme Disease. So the Ice Man could be oldest known case of relapsing fever. Or the oldest known case of something else we don’t totally understand.
This is one of the things we have to watch out for, in Lymeworld, but also let’s face it - in politics, and on virtually every other complicated issue that’s discussed online - even though science and medicine evolves and changes, the past is sometime served up right alongside the present. Information is readily available - but sorting through it, and verifying it’s accuracy, is no easy task. I read any number of articles telling me that Otzi had Lyme Disease - and, if I hadn’t called the man in charge of studying him, I would be saying the same thing.
And frankly… this is the nature of both journalism AND SCIENCE. Big breakthroughs get a lot of attention and headlines. Retractions and corrections… not so much.
Combine all of this, and you get a world in which people who aren’t doing the most careful research can cherry pick their sources and construct almost any reality they want.
And that… is how you get Lymeworld.
[theme, credits]
This bonus episode of Patient Zero was produced and reported by me, Taylor Quimby.
Sam Evans-Brown is Patient Zero’s senior Producer.
Erika Janik is Executive Producer.
Graphics by Sara Plourde.
Maureen McMurray is Director of Content.
If you’ve got questions, concerns, or comments about Patient Zero - we want to hear from you. Email us at patientzero@nhpr.org.
Patient Zero’s Theme was composed and performed by Ty Gibbons.
Additional music from Blue Dot Sessions.
Patient Zero is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio.