Oetzi just keeps on revealing his secrets. Another researcher looked closely at the 'backpack.' There is a problem, in that it wouldn't fit either inside or over the raincape. But her close analysis postulates they are actually fragments of snowshoes. The restored dimensions and attachment points closely fall into the same ancient parameters of modern versions. Well, what I consider modern; wood and rawhide with lampwick bindings. This makes sense, as an earlier recreation of his trek was very exaustive and slow going in his footwear. The copper axe proved a splendid ice axe though. If true, this ponders another mystery. Snowshoes were considered a New World invention, oddly absent in Eurasia. It seems Oetzi not only used acupuncture before the chinese, but snowshoes before the subarctic indians.