00:015300 years ago, a man was murdered in the Alps.
00:04His killer walked away free.
00:05And nobody knew it was even a murder until the year 2001.
00:09This is the oldest cold case in human history, and it took a detective from Munich to crack
00:13it.
00:13Two hikers stumbled onto a body frozen in the ice.
00:16Everyone assumed it was just some unlucky climber who died recently.
00:20But beside him lay a copper axe, a flint dagger, and a few arrowheads.
00:24This man hadn't died a few years ago.
00:26He had died 53 centuries ago.
00:29Scientists opened him up, and it got strange.
00:31He was riddled with parasites.
00:33His teeth were rotting.
00:35But none of that killed him.
00:37The real shot came 10 years later, during a routine CT scan.
00:40Embedded in his left shoulder they found a flint arrowhead, no bigger than a thumbnail,
00:44fired from behind.
00:45It had sliced through his subclavian artery, the main vessel feeding his arm.
00:49With no hospitals and no transfusions, that wasn't an injury.
00:53It was a death sentence.
00:54From the shot to the end, he had minutes.
00:56The craziest part.
00:58That arrowhead hid under the noses of the world's best experts for 10 whole years.
01:02They studied this man from his hair to his toenails, and nobody noticed an arrow in his
01:06back.
01:07He wasn't a climber who fell.
01:09He was murdered.
01:10A cold case 5300 years old.
01:13So how do you investigate a case that old?
01:15An Italian museum brought in a real detective, Alexander Horn, a homicide investigator from
01:20the Munich police.
01:21His oldest case had been about 40 years old.
01:24Now they handed him one that was 5000.
01:26He thought it was impossible.
01:28Then he saw the body and changed his mind.
01:31The iceman, he said, was better preserved than some modern victims he'd worked on.
01:35The first clue was in his stomach.
01:37The contents were packed with wild goat, deer, and an ancient grain, nearly half of it
01:41pure fat.
01:42He'd eaten a huge meal right before climbing the mountain.
01:45And crucially, the food was barely digested.
01:47He died within about half an hour of eating.
01:49Would a hunted man stop for a slow, luxurious meal?
01:53Absolutely not.
01:55Which means, in those final moments, he believed he was safe.
01:58The second clue was also in his gut, pollen.
02:01Microscopic grains, swallowed as he walked, act like a flight recorder.
02:05They mapped his last two days.
02:07He started high on a mountain, descended into a valley, then climbed again, all the way to
02:11a pass at 3200 meters, like two skyscrapers stacked together.
02:14It was late spring.
02:16So why would a lone man hike down a valley, only to climb back into the snow?
02:20The third clue was on his right hand, a deep cut between thumb and forefinger.
02:24To a forensic expert, that's a classic defensive wound, the kind you get blocking a blade with
02:28your bare hand.
02:29And it had already begun to heal.
02:31He'd fought someone a day or two before he died, and he'd won.
02:35Then there's what he carried.
02:36A yew would bow, taller than he was, but unfinished.
02:40No string had ever been attached.
02:42Of fourteen arrows, only two had real arrowheads.
02:45Picture it, a man who'd just survived a fight, carrying a bow he couldn't finish and arrows
02:49he couldn't fire.
02:50Put it all together, and the reconstruction is chilling.
02:53Late spring.
02:54He fought someone in the valley, cut his hand, and won.
02:57But he knew it wasn't over.
02:59So he left the village and climbed nearly two miles into the mountains.
03:03He found a sheltered spot, set his things down, and ate his last meal.
03:06He believed he was finally safe.
03:09He wasn't.
03:10Someone was still out there, and they had followed him the whole way.
03:13He never saw it coming.
03:15Thirty meters behind him, someone had been following.
03:18About the length of a basketball court.
03:20That person drew a bow and aimed at his back.
03:22The arrowhead didn't pass through, telling us the shooter wasn't close.
03:26Whoever fired waited until he wasn't looking, and struck from behind.
03:29Then they pulled out the shaft, because in that era, an arrow could identify its owner.
03:34Leaving it was leaving your name at the scene.
03:35So was it robbery?
03:37No.
03:38The copper axe by his side was worth a fortune.
03:41In that era, new pure copper was like driving a luxury car.
03:44The killer never touched it.
03:46Why?
03:47Because bringing it home would have been the same as confessing.
03:50Everyone in the village would recognize it as his.
03:52This wasn't theft.
03:54This was personal.
03:55There'd been an earlier fight, and whoever lost came back for revenge.
03:59From a distance.
04:00From behind.
04:02Nobody knows who the killer was.
04:04What happened to him?
04:05That person walked down the mountain, probably had children, likely died old, and turned to
04:09dust.
04:10And the iceman lay there as snow buried him and a glacier crept overhead like a lid.
04:14Untouched for 5300 years.
04:17In those centuries, humanity invented writing, built the pyramids, flew airplanes, walked on
04:21the moon, and finally used a CT scanner to find the arrowhead in his back.
04:25But strip away the technology, and this is just an old story.
04:29Someone made an enemy.
04:30Someone struck.
04:31And someone shot another man in the back.
04:345000 years later, our tools have changed.
04:37Our hearts barely have.
04:39Every day, countless secrets are buried with their owners.
04:42The iceman is just special.
04:43He had a glacier to keep his secret for 53 centuries, just so he could tell us his story today.
04:47All right.
04:58So, we?
04:58Well, it's a
