ROME (Reuters) - A prehistoric Italian iceman nicknamed "Otzi" may have been shot in the back with an arrow, but he only died after prolonged combat with his foes, new DNA evidence has shown.
The 5,000-year-old corpse, dug out of a glacier in northern Italy more than a decade ago, had traces of blood from four different people on his clothes and weapons, molecular archeologist Tom Loy said Wednesday.
He also had "defensive cut wounds" on his hands, wrists and rib cage, Loy said after recent blood and DNA tests. Loy, a senior lecturer at Queensland University in Brisbane, traveled to the northern Italian town of Bolzano for the research.
"Presumably he was in a combat situation for between 24 to 48 hours before he died," Loy said in a telephone interview.
"I think one of the things we could advance is that he shot at least two different people and retrieved his arrow, but then he shot at something else and missed, shattering his arrow."
Loy took initial blood samples from Otzi's arrows, knife and coat in July. Amplifying and sequencing the samples, he concluded they belonged to four different people -- not including Otzi himself.
"The plot thickens a bit now," Loy said. "Rather than a simple murder ... it looks like he may have put himself in a boundary situation where bloody battles often occur."
Otzi, the oldest mummy ever unearthed, was found in the Italian Alps in 1991. Scientists were thrilled to find he had remained frozen, and almost perfectly preserved, for thousands of years.
He wore clothing made from leather and grasses and carried a copper axe, a bow and arrows. Speculation immediately began about who he was and why he died where he did, but it was hard to do too much checking without damaging his body.
Later, an arrowhead was found in his left shoulder, suggesting Otzi did not simply freeze to death while climbing the high mountains, but was shot by a fellow hunter.
After studying the corpse's intestines, Italian researcher Franco Rollo concluded last year that the iceman's final meals consisted of venison and ibex meat.
The latest research gives scientists a glimpse of what the stone age hunter's last, bloody hours must have been like.
Loy said the tools that Otzi was carrying suggest he was a specialist hunter who often worked above the tree line in high passes that were often boundary areas between different, hostile language groups.
He said the blood found on the back of Otzi's coat could have come from a wounded companion that he was carrying, but that the arrows and knife blade suggest that he was also fighting off at least two foes.
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