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That is my question Min.
Are there wild goats, or any other kind of animal life, that high in the Alps?
Would they have been around back then?

Check page 5 of this thread, kb.

More than you ever wanted to know about freakin' goats!

http://www.ansi.okstate.edu/breeds/goats/alpines/


R/S - wolves are pack hunters. That can even the odds.

Minimalist wrote:
R/S - wolves are pack hunters. That can even the odds.

Wolves can't scale mountains. Ibex can!

Watch this. Wolves can't handle that terrain. Ibex are incredibly sure-footed and fleet-footed. The ultimate 4 x 4 !
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=an9eA6XZsSg

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-2 ... nlargePage


Apparently, it does happen. Although to be fair, wolves like all predators tend to catch the ones who are old, young or sick.

So, I guess that means that someone as well acquainted with the area as he seems to have been, would have thought about the possibility of wolves as well as humans looking for him?

Now we have a question of blunt trauma to the head. From a fight prior to the flight, or caused by a fall during the flight? (The flight is assumed due to the arrow in the back from a below the target angle, and someone said a 30 meter distance.)

Did he fall to where he was found, or did he pick it as a defensible spot? Was there heads on the arrows? Headless arrows would have some defensive use, but clearly not as effective as they could be. Did he have arrowheads in his bag, waiting to be affixed?

How old were the wounds before death? Was there blood in the soil around him? Or had the arrow wound started to close up? Same question re: the head wounds. Blood clotting on the brain?

With a serious loss of blood and some hard hits to the head, and at a low oxygen atmosphere, we can assume he wasn’t thinking real clearly. But he seems to be a guy that knew the neighborhood. When does instinct and training start to take over?

I am an armchair expert in this area. I have never been pushed that hard and hope never to be. But I have read stories of search and rescue teams finding unconscious guys in constructed, defendable, holes, and they have no recollection of building them.

Regretably KB I can answer some of your questions from personal experience. About the arrows etc I know not, I can't remember from the programme, perhaps Min can refresh me on that.
As regards the head injury, I suffered a large skull fracture, with brain damage, (laugh here folks), and for some hours after I was perfectly lucid, so I was informed. Then I slipped into coma till my eardrum ruptured and released the blood and removed the pressure from my brain. I have no memory of the period from before the injury till I came out of the coma despite having been lucid and functioning normally.
Apparently this is quite normal, and I would point out that the skin was not even broken by the blow even though the damage and coma was such that my parents were told I had no chance of survival.

at a low oxygen atmosphere,

I don't think the altitude was much of a factor, other than it was cold. Denver is a mile high (5,280 ft. ) and they don't have a problem. They've got a decent football team.

And som SA cities are even higher aren't they Beag?

The Incas fought many wars in the Andes. And built Macchu Picchu.

One of the things that I feel is important in this saga is that he fled into the mountains rather than along the valley. That was either and act of desperation or he knew the mountains and believed that his pursuers did not.
I feel that it's a great shame that we will never know the whole story.

I've always thought that Oetzi feared the men chasing him a lot more than the cold weather. Ultimately, they killed him - not the weather.

Which would infer that he was a 'mountain man' Beag. Could be wrong, but that's how I see it as well.

Yes but I think anybody living in that sort of Alpine terrain could be called a mountain person.

I seem to recall that several of the arrows were unfinished...not sure how many were ready to go.