5000-Year-Old Mummy Mystery

The Tyrolean Iceman has offered up another mystery. (The first one being: who stole his genitals?) He is from a human lineage that is no longer in existence, and scientists don't know what to make of that.

The so-called Tyrolean Iceman, a 5,000-year-old mummy found in an Alpine glacier roughly two decades ago, lived in an era when people were smelting copper and living in cities. But a recent study of his mitochondrial DNA — circlets of genetic material passed on solely through mothers — revealed something astonishing about this recent human ancestor. He is from a distinct genetic group that mysteriously disappeared. Perhaps no one sharing his genetic lineage survived into the present day. Or perhaps humans are evolving so quickly that even our close ancestors are genetically distinct from us in significant ways.

This new information might be in line with recent evidence that human evolution is accelerating.

There was an "The Iceman No Longer Cometh" joke trying to be written here, but it seems kind of mean now that we know he doesn't have any family. Poor guy's been through enough.