Otzi the Iceman, Europe's oldest and most well-preserved natural mummy, was discovered in 1991 in the Italian Alps. Very little was known about Otzi or his origins (Was he a hunter and gatherer or was he a farmer? Did he have blue eyes or dark hair?) until his whole genome was sequenced four years ago and the results were analyzed by Stanford geneticists Carlos Bustamante, PhD, and Peter Underhill, PhD. In a recent NOVA special, "Iceman Reborn," Otzi's past is retraced, and Bustamante shares some of the findings from the DNA analysis, which includes a lot of surprises. The program, which includes a 3D recreation of the Iceman (or, as one young student calls him, the "coolest dead guy in the world") is definitely worth checking out.
Previously: Iceman's origins discovered at Stanford, Roots of disease may vary with ancestry, according to Stanford geneticist and Non-European representation woefully lacking in genomics studies, say Stanford geneticists
