New, advanced DNA analysis of the famous “Iceman” mummy shows this ancient individual is not who we thought. A 5,300-year-old mummy (which rhymes with the word “Tutsi”) nicknamed Otsi is the oldest intact human body ever found.

He has fascinated the world since his body was first found in 1991 in Italy’s Ötztal Alps. But the way most people imagine this 46-year-old man may not be quite accurate. According to a study by researchers at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, Etzi may not have been a hairy Caucasian hunter-gatherer as previous reconstructions suggest, but a relatively dark-skinned and bald-headed farmer.

“Genome analysis has revealed phenotypic traits such as high skin pigmentation, dark eye color and male pattern baldness,” said evolutionary anthropologist Johannes Krause from the Max Planck Institute in Germany.

Scientists may know what Etzi ate last and how she sounded, but what she looks like is another matter. The first study of Eczi’s genome was done in 2012 and found evidence that this individual was closely related to the modern inhabitants of Sardinia. Therefore, it was thought to come from Eastern hunter-gatherer and Caucasian hunter-gatherer populations that converged in the fifth millennium.

But the new findings did not reveal any identifiable origin for this species. Instead, the researchers found Anatolian farmer ancestors “unusually high” in the Eci genome; this was more than almost any other population known in Europe at the time. The findings suggest that Eci was closely related to the ancestry of Neolithic farmers in Anatolia, where Turkey is now located. They later migrated to Italy, but remained relatively isolated and separate in the Alps.

Eci’s ancestors may have begun mixing with hunter-gatherers in other European countries just a few dozen generations before she was born – a relatively short time in population evolution.

In the Ecchi genome, the researchers found evidence of an agrarian diet and skin pigmentation that was darker than typical of modern European populations. They also identified risk alleles associated with male pattern baldness. The hair that the hunter once had must have been black.

Krause explains that the findings match the dark and hairless appearance of the mummy itself. But previous research has suggested that this appearance is the result of being frozen for millennia rather than an accurate representation of Ezi’s appearance during her lifetime.

The authors of the new analysis acknowledge that “an individual has a limited resolution to represent the population history of his or her time and region,” but their results are consistent with other ancient peoples found in Italy. For example, a corpse found near the southern Alps also shows an important lineage linked to Anatolian farmers in recent genome studies.

“Future studies with a more concentrated sample from the Southern Alps will be needed to replicate our findings and show whether the Iceman is an exception or representative of its population,” the researchers wrote. Source