Have you heard? Ötzi, the mummified mountain man discovered in an Alpine glacier in 1991, actually came from an Egyptian burial chamber and was only brought to Austria after his discovery for PR reasons. He was a shaman, don’t you know, a criminal, a eunuch. Oh, and he also had a predilection for gay sex practices and had dark skin.

A lot of people have said a lot of untrue, unbelievable and outrageous things about the iceman found in the Ötztal valley, in the heart of the Austrian Alps. It didn’t take long, though, for most of it to either be clearly identified as a conspiracy theory or as an easily resolved misunderstanding. Such as the assertions of his homosexuality: Seeds were, in fact, discovered in Ötzi’s intestinal tract, but not semen, as one newspaper wrote, the confusion perhaps stemming from the fact that the two words are identical in German. The claims that he didn’t have a penis were also the product of an inaccuracy: The first researchers to inspect the shriveled corpse simply hadn’t looked closely enough.

But one allegation is very likely true: Ötzi had dark skin. As a team of researchers has now discovered, his complexion was the darkest of any European from the same time period that has been examined using DNA analysis. Furthermore, Ötzi’s roots were almost exclusively Anatolian. Yet "Frozen Fritz," who spent around 5,000 years almost continuously encased in ice, is regularly depicted in documentations and illustrations as a white Central European with a full beard, the kind of rugged outdoorsman one might see hunched over a mug of beer in an Alpine inn even today. Jürgen Vogel, who portrayed Ötzi in the 2017 German film "Iceman," was also depicted as such.

The new insights into Ötzi’s origins and skin color come from an international team of scientists that includes the Bolzano-based mummy expert Albert Zink and Johannes Krause, director of the department for archaeogenetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. The team took samples from the mummy’s left hip bone and surrounding tissue, using it to analyze Ötzi’s genome. The results were published last week in the journal Cell Genomics.

The article by Krause and his team has the potential to put the South Tyrol Museum of Archeology in Bolzano in a rather awkward spot. In addition to the mummy itself, the museum has a reconstruction of the "Iceman" on display that has become almost as well known as the corpse itself. The figure was made by the artist twins Adrie and Alfons Kennis of the Netherlands, and it shows Ötzi as a good-natured mountain man who could have jumped straight out of "Heidi." He looks so real that many visitors find the model even more amazing than the original, which can only be viewed through a small window.

From now on, many guests will no doubt gaze at the reconstruction with a certain amount of skepticism, in part certainly due to the new findings relating to Ötzi’s mane. According to Zink, Krause and their fellow researchers, the man from the Chalcolithic age had a genetic predisposition for baldness. He likely only had a smattering of hair on his head during the final years of his life – and not thick, long tresses like those on the head of the figure carrying a spear and wearing fur pants in the museum in Bolzano. Indeed, Ötzi’s noggin was likely quite similar to that of Jürgen Vogel, who is bald – and would have made an even better Ötzi without the wig he wore in the film. Strictly speaking, the new findings mean that the replica produced by the Kennis brothers no longer belongs in a scientifically rigorous institution like the South Tyrol Museum of Archeology, which has attracted 300,000 visitors per year since it opened its doors in 1998.

Alfred Zink, the anthropologist who heads up the Institute for Mummy Studies at Eurac Research in Bolzano, isn’t as surprised about the study findings as one might have supposed. In contrast to other mummies, there was almost no hair found with Ötzi – just a few strands of brown hair. A far cry from the tangled mop on the Bolzano model. That fact oddly carried little weight when the reconstruction was produced – even though it seems unlikely even to non-experts that his hair would have almost completely disintegrated in the ice of the Tisenjoch glacier, while his clothes, made partially of grass, and other belongings would have survived intact.

For Zink, the results of the skin-color analysis were also quite logical. The mummy itself is brown in color, Zink notes, adding that it is similar to the skin of Egyptian mummies. The conjecture thus far adhered to – namely that Ötzi’s skin darkened over the centuries he spent in the ice from some as-yet unknown effect – can now be discarded, Zink says. "What we see as the color of the mummy was in fact Ötzi’s original skin color," the scientist says.

Even before the genome analysis, there was another strong argument likewise indicating that the skin color of the Ötzi model in the Tyrolean museum was perhaps too light. Several years ago, researchers performed a histological examination and arrived at the conclusion that because of the pigment density in the mummy’s skin, he was likely more Mediterranean in appearance. Furthermore, light-colored skin only arrived on the continent some 4,900 years ago with migrants from the east. In the DNA of Ötzi, who died much earlier, there was unsurprisingly no trace of these newcomers from the steppes. The mummy’s genome also lacked almost any traces at all that could have connected him to the hunters and gatherers who had, by then, been living in Europe for several millennia. According to all that scientists have been able to find out about them, they likely had darker skin as well.

"Genetically, it looks as though Ötzi’s predecessors came directly from Anatolia,” says the biochemist Krause. He and his people likely lived in small, relatively isolated settlements with little contact – particularly not of a sexual nature – with other groups. But Krause, Zink and the rest of the team were also careful to mention in their paper that there were also no indications in Ötzi’s genome of inbreeding.

The team’s findings fit well with other study results published in recent years. In 2018, DNA analyses found that the "first Brit," nicknamed Cheddar Man looked quite a bit different than many people had imagined. Instead of a white complexion, the man – who lived some 10,000 years ago and was laid to rest in a cave – actually had dark brown to almost black skin. Because numerous other Stone Age humans in Europe had a similar skin color, it seems that numerous schoolbooks, museum illustrations and television documentaries may be inaccurate. Most such depictions show our ancestors with white skin and plenty of hair. The same is true of the Neanderthals, who are likewise frequently depicted with a lighter shade of skin – but who, according to scientific research, also probably had browner complexions.

Archaeogeneticist Krause believes the light-skinned depictions of Europe’s earliest ancestors stems from "preconceived notions” harbored by the artists who produce them or by those who enlist their services. "I understand that many people think that our European ancestors were also white,” he says. "It’s just that it isn’t true.”

Elisabeth Vallazza, director of the South Tyrol Museum of Archeology, is taking the results of the study "very seriously," but says she sees no reason to disavow the reconstruction produced by the Kennis brothers. It was, she says, produced in accordance with "the research of that time" and on the basis of 3D models and CT scans of the mummy and its skeleton. The skull matches the original form, she points out, his height of 1.60 meters (5’3”) and the shoe size of 38 (5.5 U.S.) all correspond to the dimensions of the real Ötzi. She says the model has not lost value as a result of the new findings, adding that genes cannot tell us precisely how a person might have looked. Plus, a genetic susceptibility – such as that for baldness – does not absolutely have to translate into reality. "But those who wish to do so are free to imagine our Ötzi with a bald head," she says.

Vallazza is well aware that the Ötzi model – made of silicon, synthetic resin and real hair – makes a far greater impression on many visitors than the mummy itself. "It is only through the reconstruction that people gain a clear understanding that it actually was a real person who was found in the glacial ice," says Vallazza, an archeologist in her own right. She frequently sees visitors standing "almost devoutly" in front of the artificial Ötzi, she says, enchanted by how realistic he looks.

The popularity and public awareness of the Ötzi model stems in part from the fact that the museum and the tourism industry – out of respect for the dead – only use the replica on marketing materials, and not images of the mummy itself. The Kennis reproduction can be seen everywhere in Bolzano: on posters, on flags, on coffee mugs, on calendars, on shot glasses, even on chocolate packaging. According to Vallazza, many people think first of the figure when they hear the name Ötzi, and only then of the mummy. If the figure were to now be removed, Bolzano would have a PR problem.

The museum’s success has never wavered since its grand opening in 1998. In the peak tourist season, long lines frequently develop before the museum entrance, and again inside as people wait to get a look through the small window – large enough for a maximum of two people at a time – behind which the mummy lies. Because of that popularity, a new structure is being built not far away to house the exhibition. The museum is expected to move and reopen this decade. "That could provide an opportunity to alter or replace the current reconstruction," says Vallazza, "assuming new findings aren’t produced by other geneticists by then."