What Did Our Ancestors Really Eat?

Figuring out what foods were on ancient menus can be tricky, but a mummy called Ötzi the Iceman was preserved with his last meal still intact. Learn what scientists found out about his eating habits in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to brain Stuff from how Stuff Works. Hey, brain stuff,
Lauren Vogelbaum Here. You may have heard of folks emulating
the diets of our ancient pre agricultural human ancestors for
health and welfare, you know, paleo. But thanks to recent research,
we now have an actual ancient menu of sorts to
follow the last meal of Otsi a k a. The Iceman,

(00:25):
a five thousand, three hundred year old man whose frozen
body was found by German tourists in the Italian Alps
back in. An international group of researchers has conducted the
first in depth study of the contents of Otsi's stomach
and small and large intestines, as detailed in an article
published in a July issue of the journal Current Biology.
They used a combination of multi omics studies involving different

(00:47):
biomolecules such as ancient DNA proteins, metabolites, and lipids, plus
microscopic examination to reconstruct the exact composition of Otsi's food intake.
Just before his apparent violent death from massive bleeding caused
by an arrow wound in his shoulder, Otzy's stomach still
contained a small amount of food that he was in
the process of digesting, including animal muscle, fibers and plant fragments,

(01:10):
as well as metabolic compounds that indicated the presence of
dairy products and whole grain cereals. In addition to the
chemical analysis, the researchers also analyzed DNA they found in
the food and studied bacteria in Otsey's gas or intestinal tract.
From that, they determined that Otsey's last meal probably consisted
of ibex and red deer meat that he ate, either

(01:30):
fresh or dried, and fat from grazing animals or dairy
products supplemented with ein corn, a wild species of wheat.
Otsy's diet was high in fat, with its residues making
up between twenty seven and forty six of his stomach's contents.
The researchers think that that wasn't by accident. In the cold,
high altitude environment in which Otsy lived, it was a

(01:50):
challenge to avoid starvation and energy loss. The researchers wrote,
the ice man seemed to have been fully aware that
fat displays an excellent energy source. Puzzlingly, see stomach also
contained particles of toxic bracken fern and mosses, which may
have come from plant material to wrap his meat. Another
possibility is that Otsi took the toxic fern as a
medicine for intestinal problems related to parasites found in his gut.

(02:14):
But we should mention that Otsi's diet may not be
demonstrative of the diets of his era. Ancient hunter gatherers
diets varied greatly according to the region where they lived.
While Otsi eight meat and grains, ancient people in what
is now Botswana got seventy of their calories from carbohydrates
and sugars in melons and starchy roots, for example. Ancient
diets were necessarily local. Today's episode was written by Patrick

(02:41):
Jake Tiger and produced by Tyler Clang. For more on
this and lots of other well preserved topics, visit our
home planet, how stuff works dot com.