The Iceman's Last Meal Consisted of Fat, Wild Meat, and Cereals.

Authors:
Frank Maixner, Dmitrij Turaev, Amaury Cazenave-Gassiot, Marek Janko, Ben Krause-Kyora, Michael R Hoopmann, Ulrike Kusebauch, Mark Sartain, Gea Guerriero, Niall O'Sullivan, Matthew Teasdale, Giovanna Cipollini, Alice Paladin, Valeria Mattiangeli, Marco Samadelli, Umberto Tecchiati, Andreas Putzer, Mine Palazoglu, John Meissen, Sandra Lösch, Philipp Rausch, John F Baines, Bum Jin Kim, Hyun-Joo An, Paul Gostner, Eduard Egarter-Vigl, Peter Malfertheiner, Andreas Keller, Robert W Stark, Markus Wenk, David Bishop, Daniel G Bradley, Oliver Fiehn, Lars Engstrand, Robert L Moritz, Philip Doble, Andre Franke, Almut Nebel, Klaus Oeggl, Thomas Rattei, Rudolf Grimm, Albert Zink
Year of publication:
2018
Volume:
28
Issue:
14
Issn:
0960-9822
Journal title abbreviated:
CURR BIOL
Journal title long:
CB : current biology : dispatches from the front lines of biology
Impact factor:
10.900
Abstract:
The history of humankind is marked by the constant adoption of new dietary habits affecting human physiology, metabolism, and even the development of nutrition-related disorders. Despite clear archaeological evidence for the shift from hunter-gatherer lifestyle to agriculture in Neolithic Europe [1], very little information exists on the daily dietary habits of our ancestors. By undertaking a complementary -omics approach combined with microscopy, we analyzed the stomach content of the Iceman, a 5,300-year-old European glacier mummy [2, 3]. He seems to have had a remarkably high proportion of fat in his diet, supplemented with fresh or dried wild meat, cereals, and traces of toxic bracken. Our multipronged approach provides unprecedented analytical depth, deciphering the nutritional habit, meal composition, and food-processing methods of this Copper Age individual.