Italy has strange ancient fossil guys

Italy has a couple of strange ancient guys.  One of them is Ötzi, the frozen Bronze Age hunter found in the Italian mountains (a few hundred yards from Austria), who was apparently assassinated in a tribal power struggle.

And after reading this Daily Mail article, I found out about "Altamura Man", a Neanderthal (now conclusively identified as such) who was encased in calcite after falling into a cave sinkhole.  And the pictures of him are positively spooky.

"The DNA is the oldest to ever be extracted from a Neanderthal and the researchers now hope to further analyse the genetic information from the skeleton. ... However, few could agree on whether the skeleton belonged to a Neanderthal or a modern human, or how long it had been down there. But after taking a tiny part of the skeleton's shoulder bone, researchers at the Sapienza University of Rome, University of Firenze and Newcastle University have been able to answer the questions. They found mitochondrial DNA they extracted from the shoulder bone matched that of other Neanderthal skeletons."

Here's a spooky picture of Altamura Man: