00:00This shouldn't happen. Free men should not die in the first winter of an Arctic expedition.
00:04Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're looking at times when human remains were uncovered from ice.
00:10Otzi froze at 11,000 feet, nearly 4,000 meters, on a desolate icy ridge.
00:19A Swiss Couple
00:20In 1942, Marcelin and Francine Zumoulin went to feed their cattle one morning in the Bernese
00:26Alps in Switzerland. That was the last time their children heard from their parents. Without them,
00:31the siblings were split up and raised by different families, losing contact over the years.
00:36In 2017, a technician for a ski lift company was examining equipment on the Saint-Florent
00:41glacier in the Alps when they found strange black rocks. However, on closer inspection,
00:47it turned out to be items like backpacks and glass bottles, and two bodies within the ice.
00:52DNA analysis soon confirmed it was the missing Zumoulin couple.
00:56Seemingly, they had fallen into a crevasse and sadly lost their lives.
01:00The surviving children held a funeral for their parents.
01:03Zug Zug the Caveman
01:05Imagine walking around Theodore Wirth Park in Minneapolis, enjoying the fresh air. But then,
01:10you suddenly stop as you come across an unusual sight. A caveman entombed in a block of ice.
01:16Well, that was what happened in 2021. But fear not, there is an explanation for it.
01:21After being commissioned by ad agency Hunt Adkins the year before to create Zug Zug the
01:26Caveman for an event, artist Zach Schumach and his collective put the artwork in the park,
01:30encouraging people to not use their phones and explore the outdoors.
01:40Schumach also stated that Zara, the mother huntress, was out there,
01:43and this cave woman was later found.
01:45The name Zug Zug is seemingly a nod to the 1981 film Caveman, which used the phrase for
01:51intimate relations.
02:00Sacrificed Incan Children
02:02In 1999, three mummies were found at the icy summit of Yuyayaco,
02:07a stratovolcano located in the Atacama Desert. These mummies are known as the
02:11Children of Yuyayaco, and they could be the best preserved mummies in the entire world.
02:22Chronicles record that a special group were chosen each year to serve the sun god.
02:28One is the body of a teenage girl, and the other two are children believed
02:31to be around six and seven years old.
02:34Some could be of a fairly young age. They could be six to eight years, some maybe ten years.
02:39Their beauty was one of the reasons for selecting them,
02:43and in some cases even their parents might have offered them.
02:46It's assumed that they're the victims of a human sacrifice meant to ensure a rich harvest,
02:50and that they were killed around the year 1500.
02:53They were heavily drugged with alcohol and coca,
02:55placed five feet underground while asleep, and left to die.
02:59A combination of the freezing temperatures and extremely dry air
03:01have helped preserve their bodies for centuries.
03:13Sadly, we're not talking about an ancient mummy for this one.
03:16In 2017, a hiker discovered a dead body in a crevasse on New Zealand's Fox Glacier
03:21and contacted police.
03:23While some believed the corpse was decades old, the fact that it was found in a crevasse led
03:27glaciologist Andrew McIntosh to assume that it was no more than five years old.
03:31His guess was correct.
03:33Further study found that the corpse was that of Cynthia Charlton,
03:36a British woman who died in a helicopter accident in November 2015.
03:40She was one of the crash's seven victims, which also included her husband.
03:47Now here's a creepy story for you.
03:48A climber on the slopes of Mexico's Pico de Orizaba slipped
03:52and came face to face with a mummified head and arm protruding from the snow.
04:07That's how episodes of CSI start.
04:10The authorities were called in, and two more frozen mummies were eventually discovered.
04:17An 81-year-old named Luis Espinoza declared he knew the mummies,
04:27as he was part of a tragic expedition that claimed three lives back in 1959.
04:32He recognized one of the men from his shirt and ring, which was emblazoned with his initials.
04:37It's certainly nice for Luis to finally get some peace,
04:39but just imagine being the guy who found a mummified head sticking out of the snow.
04:43A Preserved Mummy Head
04:45In 2017, archaeologists found mummies buried in the Zeleniy Yar burial site
04:50near the Russian town of Selikart.
04:52They found two mummies, one an adult woman and the other a baby.
04:56These mummies are estimated to be 900 years old,
04:59and are said to be part of an unknown medieval culture.
05:02The interesting thing was that the female mummy is the only female in the burial ground,
05:06leading some to assume that she was an elite member of society.
05:09It's also interesting and creepy because only her head has been preserved.
05:13On the head, you can still see her hair and eyelashes,
05:16and her face has a green tint due to the copper she was buried in.
05:20Three Members of the Franklin Expedition
05:23Many are familiar with the ill-fated Franklin Expedition
05:25from Dan Simmons' novel The Terror and its television adaptation.
05:35Three members of the expedition,
05:37John Torrington, William Brane, and John Hartnell,
05:40passed away shortly after departure and before the ships became stuck in the pack ice.
05:44They were buried on Beachy Island, Nunavut in 1846 and exhumed in 1984.
06:00What anthropologists found were remarkably preserved corpses,
06:04albeit incredibly disturbing ones.
06:06Their faces are contorted, their eyes frozen open, and their skin horribly frostbitten.
06:12Now imagine opening the coffins and seeing that.
06:15Ötzi the Iceman
06:16Ötzi is perhaps the most famous natural mummy in the world.
06:20Found in 1991 on the border of Austria and Italy,
06:23Ötzi is the naturally mummified corpse of a man who died around 3300 BC.
06:36The mummy was actually found by German tourists.
06:41They were hiking along a mountain path in the Ötztal Alps
06:43when they found the upper half of the mummy sticking out of the ice.
07:00It's currently believed that the man bled to death after being struck by an arrow.
07:04His skinny, discolored, and leathery-looking body
07:07is now on display at Italy's South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology.
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07:42World War I Soldiers
07:53During World War I,
07:55Allies battled the Austro-Hungarian Empire along the snowy mountains of the Alps.
07:59Thousands upon thousands of soldiers were killed by avalanches and the frigid temperatures,
08:03which sometimes dipped to minus 22 Fahrenheit.
08:06Beginning in the early 2010s, the mountain ice began to melt
08:10and started depositing long-lost frozen artifacts around the area.
08:13These included weapons, still-legible love letters, and dozens of mummified corpses.
08:19It's a horrifying symbol of one of the most frightening periods of modern history.
08:23Have you ever found anything out of the ordinary frozen in ice?
08:26Let us know in the comments below.
08:28Check out these other clips from WatchMojo,
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