Ice man's discoverer seeks reward

BALZANO, Italy, Dec. 22 (UPI) -- A German man who discovered the Ice Man in the Italian Alps is demanding $250,000 as a reward, the BBC reported Monday.

Officials of Bolzano, in northern Italy, where the frozen mummy -- now named Oetzi -- is displayed in a refrigerated museum, said they are considering his request.

The Ice Man was found in the Oetztal valley on the Austrian-Italian border by hikers Helmut Simon and his wife, Erika. At first, the couple thought the remains contemporary, and only after scientists visited the site and examined the body was it determined the remains were 5,300 years old.

Simon recently was recognized as Oetzi's official discoverer after several years of court proceedings, an action that makes a finder's reward possible.

"We think that it is an honest fee," Simon's lawyer said. "The province of Bolzano makes big business with this mummy."

Egarter Vigl, the pathologist in charge of preserving Oetzi, holds a different point of view.

"We have a human body and in my personal view it's not important if this man died yesterday or 5,000 years ago," Vigl said. "He is a human being, and he has to be treated as a human being and not as an object."