A length of cord found alongside the body of Oetzi, the Neolithic hunter who was discovered entombed in ice high in the Dolomites, has been identified as a string for his wooden bow.
     Experts had long speculated that the two objects were connected but definitive proof has now been obtained by a team of Swiss scientists. The cord, which was found tucked into a quiver used by the 5,300-year-old Iceman for keeping his arrows, is made of animal sinew - ideal material for producing a strong, powerful bow. It is two metres long, almost exactly the same length as the bow that was found beside the mummified body of the hunter when he was discovered by a pair of hikers on the Schnalstal glacier in 1991.
     "It has finally been confirmed by science: the cord in Oetzi's quiver is indeed a bowstring and it fits his bow perfectly," the South Tyrol Museum of Archeology, where the mummified body of the Neolithic tribesman is kept in a climate-controlled chamber, said in a statement.
     It was previously thought the cord was made of plant material, but plant fibres "would not have withstood the tension of the bow and as such wouldn't have been suitable for a bowstring," said experts from the museum in Bolzano, in the German-speaking north of Italy. The bowstring has been declared the oldest known and best preserved in the world.
     The scientists from the Swiss National Science Foundation also discovered that the Copper Age hunter's bow had been freshly-cut from a yew tree. It was not yet finished - they found marks left by a hatchet which would have been used to whittle and shape the wood.
     The discovery of Oetzi, in a 3,210m high mountain pass on the border of Austria and Italy, caused a sensation. He died after being struck in the back by an arrow, sparking a long-running mystery as to who may have wanted to kill him and why - the ultimate cold case.

Edited from The Telegraph (18 December 2019)