Whether you are a MAGA Trump supporter or just a rational American, Donald J. Trump isn’t in a class of his own. Other Trumpers were wandering around babbling incoherent and grammatically incorrect English sentences long before the Donald strutted upon the stage of life. However, I am getting ahead of myself.

First, the backstory. In 1991, two hikers were climbing in the Ötztal Alps, a glaciated area between Italy and Austria. They discovered a dead man frozen in the ice. The authorities removed the man from his ice grave and took him to Innsbruck, Austria, to be examined.

There was no identification on the man. Hence, he acquired a list of nicknames: Frozen Man, Frozen Fritz, or the Tyrolean Iceman. However, Ötzi is commonly accepted since his name derives from the Ötztal Alps.

Ötzi’s gravesite

Initially, Ötzi was thought to be a local mountaineer who had recently died while climbing in that area. However, the local authorities soon determined that he died around 5,300 years ago. Ötzi died toward the beginning of the Copper Age. Like many other discoveries, the more information about Ötzi, the more questions emerged.

Researchers now know more about Ötzi than any other mummified person. The autopsy produced what he had been eating just prior to dying. They merely opened up his stomach and found his last supper of this man in his mid-40s.

Researchers found arsenic inside Ötzi’s body and also in his hair. This means that he was a metallurgist of his time. He acquired arsenic from melting copper and bronze for tools like the axe he carried with him.

Ötzi’s ax

Ötzi also had dozens of tattoos on his body.

Ötzi’s tattoos

Ötzi carried two types of wild mushrooms at his demise; one was for starting fires, and the other was an antiseptic possibility used as a painkiller.

This photo shows Ötzi’s possessions, like arrows and small cutting devices.

Ötzi’s belongings

Geneticists have determined that Ötzi’s DNA code was A, C, G, and T. He had brown hair and eyes, a darker skin tone, and his family had migrated from Turkey. Ötzi is an excellent example of how humans transitioned from hunter-gatherers and morphed into farming.

One anthropologist said that Ötzi was using a main thoroughfare through the glacier. It was like a much earlier version of Fifth Avenue in New York. Interestingly, researchers found an arrowhead lodged in Ötzi’s left shoulder during one of the many examinations of his body.

The arrowhead

Ötzi died due to the arrow severing a major artery near his left shoulder. Someone shot him from behind him.

Ötzi was shot in the back.

Enter one of the Donald’s forebearers. Donald the Dumb claims, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and wouldn’t lose any voters.”

So, what are two takeaways from the story of Ötzi and the Donald? Killing someone is still murder, and as Colson Whitehead wrote, “...justice may be slow and invisible, but it always renders its true verdict in the end.”

This is the PBS documentary about Ötzi.