Oetzi the Iceman’s Blood Is World’s Oldest
Researchers studying Oetzi, a 5,300-year-old body found frozen in the Italian Alps in 1991, have found red blood cells around his wounds. Blood cells tend to degrade quickly, and earlier scans for blood within Oetzi’s body turned up nothing. Now a study in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface shows that Oetzi’s remarkable preservation extends even to the blood he shed shortly before dying.
The find represents by far the oldest red blood cells ever observed and is just the latest chapter in what could be described as the world’s oldest murder mystery.