It is for that reason that the phrase, beloved of crime writers, is not very useful in real crime investigation. You can see how the same observation can be "consistent with" different stories. Did this prove that was what he hunted? How else could the DNA have got onto the spears? DNA from several animals was found on his weapons. Some of these stains could have been made weeks or months before he died. However, there is nothing to suggest that all of the blood got there during the same incident. Some claim that this may show that he was attacked by three people, and the finding of blood on his cloak is thought to suggest that he carried someone on his back. One single cell’s DNA, and you have about 100,000,000,000,000 cells in your body, can be detected.There’s not much chance that you won’t leave some trace at a scene!ĭNA analysis of these and his clothes apparently revealed the DNA of at least four individuals. Current forensic DNA technology, now called DNA profiling, can detect less than 100 picograms of DNA.
Yet DNA fingerprinting, as the original technique was called, was first used in court in 1988. As in real life crime investigation, we will never be absolutely sure of the truth.Įxamination of ‘the scene’ where Otzi lay, discovered some weapons, tools, and other bits and pieces.Īlongside fingerprints, DNA is of course, now the technique that most people think of when they think of forensic science. Some pieces of evidence fit one or more of these stories better than others. Otzi may have died peacefully, been attacked by one or more people, or animals, or had a tragic accident.
The job of the scientist is to devise tests that can disprove or prove some of these stories. A scientist tries to find evidence against any story, and the more that they look and find that the story stands up, the more they are inclined to believe it. In modern crime terms you don’t find a suspect and then try to fit the evidence around that suspect. This is the evidence and you must use that evidence to create a story not the other way around. Like all crime scenes, the scientist here is faced with trying to discover how the scene came to be the way it was discovered. Palynologists reckon that the pollen of the hop hornbeam tree found in Otzi’s stomach means that he died in early spring or summer, and was probably at low altitude at most a day before he died. Not immediately obvious as a forensic science, but some plants live in very limited geographical areas, or produce pollen at very specific times. Many of them have been applied to the case of Otzi. Science is a very powerful method for sorting out such tangles. Not only is Otzi’s death the subject of investigation, but some people think that there is a curse that has killed some of the investigators. Scientists are of course curious creatures and here is a curiosity. Of course no-one is out to jail Otzi’s killer, if indeed he was killed, but the findings on and around his body have created intense speculation about how he died. He was discovered high in the Otzal Alps in 1991 in an area that had been frozen for centuries. Otzi is the name given to the body of a man believed to have died over 5,000 years ago. The one is whether any crime has been committed at all the second is, what is the crime and how was it committed?”Ī great example of this kind of investigation is the death of Otzi "The Ice Man". In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s book The Hound of The Baskervilles, Sherlock Holmes remarks “There are two questions waiting for us at the outset. Today and in the past, the first priority has been to establish whether there has been a crime at all. Many of the techniques used by scientists to unravel crimes today can be used to unravel stories of the past, even though no crime is involved. I frequently comment that forensic science is just recent archaeology. Semantics aside, this science can offer a fascinating way of examining the past. Forensic science is both of those, but it is much more and other sciences are also analytic and careful! But for many this term has become a shorthand for a whole host of tools and techniques usually used to mean analytic or careful. Forensic science is really just science used in court. Isn’t it?Īctually the phrase "forensic science" has become confused for many.
You may have the impression from TV programmes like Waking the Dead, Silent Witness, CSI (Crime Scene Investigation), and other such detective stories, that forensic science can unlock the story behind every crime.