No next-of-kin was around to claim the frozen 5,300-year-old body of Ötzi the Iceman when it was found in the Italian Alps in 1991, but researchers now report that there are at least 19 genetic relatives of Ötzi living in Austria’s Tyrol region.
“These men and the ‘Iceman’ had the same ancestors,” Walther Parson, a researcher at the Institute for Forensic Medicine in Innsbruck, told the Austrian Press Agency last week.
They found the 19 genetic matches by looking through the DNA records of 3,700 Austrian blood donors for a rare Y-chromosome mutation known as G-L91. The mutation is a reliable marker for ancestral relationships, because it tends to be passed down intact from one generation to the next on the Y sex chromosome.
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Read the full, original story here: Scientists say Ötzi the Iceman has living relatives, 5,300 years later
