Ötzi died in the Alps around 3300 BC, about when writing appeared in Sumerian Uruk.
By the time the Great Pyramid was built, he had lain in the ice for some 700 years.
The events
- Death of Ötzi the Icemanc. 3300 BC · Ötztal Alps. A Copper Age man was killed by an arrow high in the Alps, and the ice preserved his body with clothing, a copper axe and a bow. Found in 1991, the mummy is a unique window on daily life in prehistoric Europe.
- Invention of writing in Sumerc. 3200 BC · Uruk. Scribes in the Sumerian city of Uruk began recording accounts with signs on clay tablets, which evolved into cuneiform. One of the world's first writing systems, it shaped Near Eastern culture for three millennia.
33rd century BC · 32nd century BC
More amazing facts
- 5050 BC · 2560 BC Chinchorro fishermen on the Chilean coast were mummifying their dead by about 5000 BC; their mummies predate Egypt's by some two thousand years.
- 2600 BC · 2560 BC The Peruvian city of Caral, with its stepped pyramids, flourished in the same age as Egypt's pyramids — more than 4,000 years before the Incas.
- 2560 BC · 2000 BC When the Great Pyramid of Giza was built, woolly mammoths still lived on Wrangel Island — the last of them died out only around 2000 BC.
- 2560 BC · 31 BC · 1969 Cleopatra (born 69 BC) lived closer in time to the Moon landing (about 2,040 years) than to the building of the Great Pyramid (about 2,490 years).
- 2500 BC · 2334 BC Sargon of Akkad boasted that ships from Meluhha moored at his capital.
- 1754 BC · 44 BC · 313 About 1,710 years passed between Hammurabi's laws and Caesar's assassination — nearly as long as separates us from the Edict of Milan of 313.