Oetzi the Iceman - first discovered in an Italian glacier in 1991 - has produced the oldest blood sample ever found. Photo / South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology
Oetzi the Iceman - first discovered in an Italian glacier in 1991 - has produced the oldest blood sample ever found. Photo / South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology
Scientists have discovered what is thought to be the oldest human blood ever to be found - on the body of a 5300-year-old mummy.
Traces were found on the preserved body of Oetzi the Iceman, first discovered in an Italian glacier in 1991.
A team at the Darmstadt Technical University,in Germany, used a high-tech microscope to investigate thin tissue sections from the wound where the arrow thought to have killed Oetzi, at the age of 46, entered his back, and from a laceration on his right hand.
Professor Albert Zink, of the European Academy in Bolzano, Italy, who led the investigation, said: "What emerged was an image of red blood cells with the classic 'doughnut shape', exactly as we find them in healthy people today."
