The Iceman Goeth

Ötzi the Iceman is again in the news.

Ötzi is a five thousand year old man who was discovered frozen in a glacier in Switzerland in September, 1991. It turns out that Ötzi was the victim of foul play.

*sigh*

That takes me back.

After Ötzi was discovered, it was widely, though erroneously reported, that the Iceman had several tattoos and body piercings, and--get this--that evidence of semen was found in his well preserved rectum. Faster than you can say "We're here! We're Queer" in Cro-Magnon, Ötzi was claimed as one of Our Own, and was wheeled in to prove that men have always been doing the ass sex thing.

I remember a lively conversation at The Bar, (it was called that, "The Bar," at 2nd avenue and 2nd Street) about how hot it would be to get it on with a tattooed and pierced man wearing only the skins of animals he had hunted and killed himself. And, of course, wondering if bottoms vastly outnumbered Tops in paleolithic Europe the way they did in late 20th Century Manhattan.

And, of course, none of this was true. Although it was reported somewhere in the gay press, and other outlets reported on the reporting, and so on. Even after one of the paleoanthropologists went public with the fact that we had no way of knowing just what Ötzi's love life was like.

Okay.

So sixteen years later, paleoanthropologists have figured out that Ötzi got it in the back with an arrow.

Which has me wondering... have they gotten around to looking for non-Ötzi DNA in a certain orifice?