Ortisei - Ice Man - Any family resemblance?

You know the story of the remarkable find in 1991... a human body frozen in the snow in a mountain pass... near the border of Italy and Austria... carbon dated at 3,000 BC... some 5,000 years ago. The find has encouraged archaeologists to reassess the capabilities of Neolithic Man... this guy was holding a copper hatchet at a time the experts thought the stone age was at its peak. We drove to the museum (at Bolzano) that holds the Ice Man... and had a good look. Without putting too fine a point on it, you may care to have a close look at this fellow... you may find some family resemblances. 

I immediately thought of you, because this guy clearly kept bad company. He died from an arrow puncturing the main artery servicing the left shoulder and arm. The arrowhead remained in his shoulder at the time of discovering the corpse. He had trauma to the brain... either from a fall or from combat. He had primitive tattoos on his limbs... going bald... you can see the family resemblance showing through... about 5 foot tall and weighing 50 kilograms. 

The preservation of his body was a stroke of luck. He was killed in cold dry snow. His body cooled very quickly... before bacteria had a chance to destroy body tissue. Because he died in dry snow, his body fluids drained away... leaving the body relatively dry. Snow then accumulated over the dry body and it was encased in ice for 5,000 years. Experts took charge of the corpse before it thawed... and little tissue damage occurred before it was placed in a controlled environment. 

This guy carried a range of weapons, foods and nick-nacks. He could have been a nobleman (carrying around a copper headed hatchet infers he was a blue-blood)... or a shaman (they found a range of medicines in his clothing)... or a warrior (his bows and arrows were the best of their time)... or a trader (he carried a range of food stuffs that could have been samples of goods available)... or perhaps just a simple shepherd off on holidays. If you carry this guy's DNA, you could probably guess his true profession. 

The pictures are of a replication model based on the bone structure of the corpse and some aspects of his DNA. These recreative artists get things pretty right these days... they have been working on the model since the corpse was discovered 20 years ago. But, have a close look at the eyes... the pitch of the nose... and the wrinkles around the eyes. Now go and have a good look in the mirror!