Ötzi the Iceman may have scaled ice-free Alps

By Stephanie Pappas - Live Science Contributor 11 days ago

During or just before the life of the Copper Age wanderer, many high peaks in the Alps were ice-free.

Ötzi the Iceman, a Copper Age wanderer found mummified in the Alps nearly three decades ago, may have lived at a time when the glaciers were advancing down from the highest peaks to the lower slopes of the mountains.

The ice that preserved Ötzi upon his death in about 3300 B.C. has melted since the mummy was discovered in 1991. But a new analysis of ice only 7.4 miles (12 kilometers) from where Ötzi was found suggests that only the very highest peaks were covered in glaciers until slightly before the iceman's lifetime. Just a few hundred years before Ötzi was born, nearby mountains may have been ice-free.

The findings suggest that during the Holocene, the epoch covering 11,650 years ago to the present, glaciers in the Alps have changed dramatically.

https://www.livescience.com/otzi-iceman-lived-in-ice-free-alpine.html