It’s seven a.m. on a Sunday in Bolzano, Italy, and Albert Zink just told us that we weren’t dressed appropriately. He didn’t say it, actually, but he didn’t have to. It was the look he gave. He was wearing snow shoes and ski pants, looking like he was going to the top of a mountain range. We were clad in jeans and boots. He was right.

We were headed into the Ötztal Alps, a portion of the protruding mountain range on the border of Italy and Austria. Zink is an anthropologist who has spent the past two decades studying the Iceman, one of the world’s oldest mummies, and by far its best preserved. The Iceman now sits in an Italian museum