Ötzi the Iceman has a new look: balding and dark-skinned

[gixajo]

He was bald.Oh yeah...I like it...

NEWS
16 August 2023
Ötzi the Iceman has a new look: balding and dark-skinned
Improved DNA analysis updates thinking on alpine mummy’s skin colour, ancestry and more.

This higher-quality genome showed that Ötzi’s suspected steppe ancestry probably stemmed from modern DNA contamination. Instead, the team found an astonishing level of Anatolian-farmer ancestry. These early agriculturalists, who lived in the land sandwiched between the Mediterranean and Black seas, are thought to have migrated into Europe and mixed with local hunter-gatherers. But Ötzi didn’t carry much European hunter-gatherer DNA, hinting that his lineage was genetically isolated from other Europeans at the time.

[gixajo]

16 August 2023
High-coverage genome of the Tyrolean Iceman reveals unusually high Anatolian farmer ancestry
Author links open overlay panelKe Wang 1 2 3, Kay Prüfer 2, Ben Krause-Kyora 4, Ainash Childebayeva 2, Verena J. Schuenemann 5 6 7, Valentina Coia 8, Frank Maixner 8, Albert Zink 8, Stephan Schiffels 2, Johannes Krause 2

Summary
The Tyrolean Iceman is known as one of the oldest human glacier mummies, directly dated to 3350–3120 calibrated BCE. A previously published low-coverage genome provided novel insights into European prehistory, despite high present-day DNA contamination. Here, we generate a high-coverage genome with low contamination (15.3×) to gain further insights into the genetic history and phenotype of this individual. Contrary to previous studies, we found no detectable Steppe-related ancestry in the Iceman. Instead, he retained the highest Anatolian-farmer-related ancestry among contemporaneous European populations, indicating a rather isolated Alpine population with limited gene flow from hunter-gatherer-ancestry-related populations. Phenotypic analysis revealed that the Iceman likely had darker skin than present-day Europeans and carried risk alleles associated with male-pattern baldness, type 2 diabetes, and obesity-related metabolic syndrome. These results corroborate phenotypic observations of the preserved mummified body, such as high pigmentation of his skin and the absence of hair on his head.