Scientists taking stomach samples (Photo Credit:South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology)

When two German hikers stumbled upon a dead body buried in ice in the Italian Otzal Alps in 1991, they had no idea that the pristine remains were those of a male who had inhabited Earth almost 5,300 years ago. Named Ötzi, after the mountains where he had lain for thousands of years, the Iceman is Europe’s oldest-known natural human mummy.