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

Current Biology : CB
Frank MaixnerAlbert Zink

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.

Citations

Jul 10, 2020·Mass Spectrometry Reviews·Jacopo La NasaIlaria Degano
Nov 23, 2019·World Journal of Gastroenterology : WJG·Frank MaixnerAlbert Zink
Feb 2, 2021·Science Advances·Jessica Hendy
Jul 8, 2021·Proceedings. Biological Sciences·Anne Kathrine W RungeCamilla Speller
Jul 31, 2021·Scientific Reports·Marco SchmidtWolfgang Wagner
Aug 31, 2021·Annals of Human Biology·Javier G SerranoRosa Fregel

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Datasets Mentioned

BETA
AB245427
ERP012908
PRJEB26465
PRJEB26365
PXD009565

Methods Mentioned

BETA
light microscopy
biopsies
biopsy
atomic force microscopy
AFM
Illumina sequencing
deamination
PCR
chip
Feature Extraction

Software Mentioned

NCBI tblastn
MAFFT
bwa aligner
Agilent
Screen
Trans
BWA
RAPSearch2
ChromaTOF
FastqScreen

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