A roughly 4,500 year-old skeleton of a man, probably a warrior killed by an arrow to the chest, has been discovered on a beach south of Rome, Italian police said today.
The well-preserved skeleton, dubbed "Nello", was found during a routine flyover around areas of archaeological interest in May that prompted police to probe a fissure in the ground.
"We thought it was that of a Roman solider, but then the experts identified it as dating back to the third millennium B.C.," said Raffaele Mancino, an official with the police division overseeing Italy's cultural heritage.
Six small vases were found buried alongside the skeleton, whose feet are missing. The young man probably lived just within a few hundred years of "Otzi", the prehistoric iceman whose corpse was found frozen in the Italian Alps in 1991.
Archaeologists said they plan further excavations since the discovery could be a tip-off to a broader necropolis in the area.
Reuters