Ötzi was bald and darker-skinned than previously thought – 08/16/2023 – Science

Ötzi, a man who lived 5,000 years ago, whose mummified body was found in the Italian Alps, had darker skin than previously thought and had advanced baldness, according to a study published by the Max Planck Institute of Anthropology in Leipzig on Wednesday. -Friday (16).

Analysis of the mummy’s genome established that its ancestors came from Anatolia, in present-day Turkey, added the German center, which carried out the study in conjunction with the Italian Eurac institute, based in Bolzano.

The man, who scientists estimate was around 45 years old when he died, likely had little hair and his genes show a predisposition to baldness, which explains why no hair was found on the mummy, according to study co-author Albert Zink, from the Eurac Institute.

Researchers thought the mummy’s skin darkened during the time it was exposed to the snow, but it’s likely that this was actually Ötzi’s original skin color, Zink estimated.

The genome of the remains was already decoded in 2012, but in this new study the scientists used improved sequencing methods that allow them to refine the analysis.

Ötzi has a very high percentage of genes from early Anatolian farmers compared to his European counterparts, the study found.

The researchers then inferred that it belonged to an isolated population with little contact with other groups.

Europe’s current population comes from a mixture of three groups: the continent’s first hunter-gatherers; the farming communities that arrived from the Middle East 8,000 years ago; and the pastoralists of the Eastern European steppes who joined in about 4,900 years ago.

The genetic traits of this steppe population found at Ötzi in early analyzes have not been confirmed by this new study. The hypothesis is that the sample may have been contaminated with modern DNA.

“We were very surprised not to find any traces of the eastern European steppe grazers in the new Ötzi genome, and the hunter-gatherer ratio is very low,” said Johannes Krause, a researcher at Max Planck and co-author of the study.

“Genetically, it looks like their ancestors came directly from Anatolia,” he added.