Otzi, the Ice Man, this is how he would have looked 5,275 years ago. Photo: Supplied

In the early summer about 5275 years ago, a 45-year-old man died following a fight high in the Italian Alps. An arrow with a needle-sharp stone point had pierced his leather coat and lodged in his shoulder. As he bled to death, he turned on his side and attempted to pull the arrow out. The ice enveloped him until September 19, 1991, when two climbers came across his body and the archaeologists and forensic scientists set to work evaluating this unique opportunity to shed light on Europe in the Copper Age.

Otzi, as the man is known, after the Otztal Alps where he died, is absolutely unique. Prehistorians specialising in this period have to make do with durable stone, copper and pottery artefacts and, if lucky, burials containing the bare bones of the dead.

But with Ötzi, the entire life of a man can be illuminated. He stood about 160cm tall and weighed in the vicinity of 60kg. As he climbed over the pass where he was ambushed, he was in his mid 40s, a decent age for the period. He wore a grass cape over mainly leather clothing and a bearskin hat, his shoes were of deer hide with soles from bear skin stuffed with grass. A pouch at his belt contained a bone awl, a stone drill and he carried the pyrites needed to make fire.

According to the isotopes in his teeth, he was born and raised near the village of Feldthurns in the Tyrol where to this day, there are men related to the Ice Man by common descent. Indeed, the DNA is a revelation. He is descended from the first European farmers who migrated into Europe 8000 years ago from Anatolia. He was lactose intolerant, dark skinned and brown eyed and had the gene for baldness.

We do not know why he was climbing so high in the mountains, but the contents of his stomach do show that he dined no more than two hours before his death, on the meat of chamois, ibex and red deer along with herb bread.

Obviously he must have been quite a hunter, he carried his quiver still filled with arrows. The stone arrowhead on one of these had the blood of two people adhering to it. It seems that he had fought off other attackers and still retrieved his arrow for further use.

Today, he lies in a special environment in the Bolzano Museum. How I envy son Tom, who was recently hosted there to see Ötzi, his yew longbow, clothing and the pyrites and flint he had used to make fire and cook his last meal.