Description: "A German couple hiking in Austria's tztal Alps in 1991 found a well-preserved body melting out of a glacier. With the remains were a flint-blade dagger, an ax with a copper blade, an unfinished longbow, a quiver with two finished and 12 unfinished arrows, and a pair of birch-bark containers. tzi, as the Austrians named him, was a figure from an ancient past--some 5,300 years ago, according to radiocarbon dating. He provided science with a rare opportunity to assemble information about little-known aspects of Neolithic life. Journalist Fowler describes the findings with care. Alas, the Iceman also provided the occasion for a remarkable amount of bickering. The Austrians thought he was theirs, but a survey showed that he lay in what is now Italy, just 101 yards south of the border with Austria, and so he is now on display at a new museum in Italy's South Tyrol. Additional quarrels arose over the manner of preserving the body, the money to be paid for and made from the discovery, and the conflicting scenarios of how the Iceman met his end. Fowler sets all that out, too. She makes an absorbing story of the saga."

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