I was fascinated by the story of the Iceman which broke in the early '90s. It was an account of a body discovered in melting ice on the top of the Alps Mountains in Europe and found by reliable tests to be thousands of years old. It had been preserved in the ice and suddenly appeared when the ice melted. What a marvel. Since my ancestors came from Switzerland, I even entertained the fancy that I might be distantly related. Recently, I saw a notice of a book entitled "Iceman" by Brenda Fowler, and I obtained a copy from the Scottdale library through interlibrary loan. The story of the Iceman as told by Fowler begins as a comedy of errors. Two hikers, Helmut and Erika Simon, discovered the body on Sept. 21, 1991, and reported it to the nearest mountain lodge. Their report set off a flurry of activity, some of it confused and harmful to the body. The site of the discovery was on the ridge between Austria and Italy. At first, it was uncertain which country should claim the body. Police from Austria responded first, and their efforts to remove the corpse from the ice, which still held its lower part, were disastrous. An air hammer slipped and made gouges in the body. But finally they managed to free it from the ice and transport it by helicopter to the University of Innsbruck. Here it was put in a freezer to save it from decay. It took some time to decide that this was not the body of someone lost in the Alps as recently as decades before. Artifacts found beside the body included a stone dagger and an ax. Preliminary judgment by Spindler, an archeologist from the university, pronounced the body as "About four thousand years old." He based this judgment particularly on the ax which he assumed to have been made of bronze. It was later found to be copper, and this added more than 1000 years to the age of the corpse. Soon the body of the Iceman with the artifacts became the subject of international, interprofessional and media attention. For one thing, careful investigation found that the Iceman had died in what is now Italy, not Austria. The province of South Tyrol claimed the body, and it would eventually go there. In the meantime, it would be kept in a freezer at the University of Innsbruck. Temperature and moisture control became issues of concern in order to avoid its disintegration. Other important issues also emerged. One was to gather up all the fragments of clothing and equipment from the site. The lack of professional and systematic excavation meant that some items were damaged and scattered in the mud. Nevertheless, a veritable trove of materials emerged. Painstaking study made it possible to describe with some confidence what the Iceman had been wearing, what he had been carrying and even what he had recently eaten. As implied by this, a second agenda was to arrange for the proper study of the body and the related materials by scholars who would be able to interpret the significance of the find. A third major issue was how to finance these activities. Refrigeration of the body alone was expected to cost $10,000 a month. As described by Fowler, the saga of the Iceman played itself out on a number of stages with a variety of sometimes competing characters. There were Helmut and Erika Simon, the tourists who first located the body. They came to believe they should be rewarded with some decent payment and especially with recognition for their discovery. At the end of the book, they are still disappointed. There is Spindler, the archeologist who took it upon himself to interpret what had happened to the Iceman based on too little evidence as the book reveals. The body of the Iceman became more than a discovery and more than a case for study. It became a commodity. Among the characters was Platzer, the man in charge of the freezer, who seemingly saw his mission more as preservation of the body than making it available for research. There were scientists from a variety of specialties, each one eager to study a different aspect of the find: Some studied the body, but others focused on tools or bits of clothing. As I reflect on the book, it seems that Fowler is showing a contrast between the work of Spindler, the archeologist who moved too quickly to interpret the occasion for the Iceman's demise and Oeggl, a botanist who was more careful. In the book, Oeggl has the last word. Why did the Iceman die• Why did he die up on the mountain• Was he fleeing from conflict in his home village• Were the broken ribs found in his body caused by a fight or simply by the crushing action of ice upon his dead body• Was the man a shepherd caught in bad weather at the end of summer? Spindler came to decision too quickly, as Fowler suggests, going beyond the evidence. He wrote a book and gave numerous speeches which enriched him personally. But, she indicates, his interpretation went beyond responsible scholarship. At the end of the book, Fowler presents an interpretation by Oeggl, the botanist who based his position on careful observations. In the Iceman's baggage, he found remains of maple leaves which still contained chlorophyll after five millennia. And he analyzed a tiny bit of material from the Iceman's gut. On the basis of this evidence, he concluded that the man had died in the spring, not in the fall as had been generally assumed. In the sample from his gut were found pollen grains from the hop hornbeam which flowers between March and May. Fowler is clearly more impressed with Oeggl's evidence because he was careful. "Unlike others, Oeggl was reluctant to speculate further. Already he was at the edge of his evidence. In a few years, he might be able to say more. But this was the limit of his science... "Many scenarios might be offered to explain what happened to the Iceman 5,300 years ago. But some stories were better than others. Of this Oeggl was sure." Ah yes, the Iceman. Are we really related to him• Because most who read this column are of European descent, we probably are. Because writing developed earlier in the Middle East, we trace our traditions back to there. But the discovery of the Iceman reminds us that more than 5,000 years ago possible ancestors of ours were living and working and dying in the mountains of Europe. They left no records because they could not write. So we have nothing to tell us exactly what they thought about the issues they faced. But the discovery of the Iceman illuminates their existence a little more. Hertzler is a Scottdale resident.

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