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Information about mankind's past has come from unlikely sources including a 5,300-year-old mummy found frozen in the Italian Alps. The mummy has now provided clues about migration to Europe.

According to The New York Times, the 'Ötzi Iceman', as the mummy is called, was pulled recovered in 1991 and has revealed extensive information about life of Neolithic Europeans. Recent examination of stomach tissue samples showed presence of Helicobacter pylori, a bacterium found in stomachs of nearly half the world's modern people. By analyzing the bacterium's DNA, an international team of researchers have suggested that migration to Europe could have happened later than earlier thought.

"We had assumed that we would find the same strain of Helicobacter in Ötzi as is found in Europeans today," explains the computational biologist. "It turned out to be a strain that is mainly observed in Central and South Asia today," said Thomas Rattei from University of Vienna.

The bacterium, harmless in most cases, can cause ulcers in some people. The mummy's stomach showed signs of inflammation but researchers could not ascertain if Iceman was diseased.

Modern Europeans carry a strain of H. pylori that is a hybrid of Asian and African variants. The finding of Asian strain from the mummy suggests that hybridization of the bacterium did not happen until much after Ötzi. This in turn means that arrival of African strain from migrants happened later during the last 5,000 years, CBS News reports. The migration is linked to onset of agricultural activity in Europe.

"The recombination of the two types of Helicobacter may have only occurred at some point after Ötzi's era, and this shows that the history of settlements in Europe is much more complex than previously assumed," Frank Maixner of the European Academy, said.