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Just two hours before his macabre murder, about 5300 years ago, Ötzi, the iceman, swallowed mouthwatering morsels: wild ibex and red deer meat, disheveled wheat cereals and – oddly enough – poison fern, reveals new study
It is not known why Ötzi ate the poison fern, known as fern ( Pteridium aquilinum ). But it's possible that he used the fern to wrap his food, almost like a piece of plastic wrap, and then involuntarily ingested some of the toxic spores left behind by the fern, said researcher Albert Zink, director of the Eurac Research Institute. For studies on the mummy in Bolzano, Italy
Or maybe Otzi ate fern as a type of medicine to treat his intestinal parasites, Zink said. [Album: A New Face for Ötzi the Iceman Mummy]
"It looks like he's been consuming [the bracken] quite regularly, which would make him more like a kind of drug than he's taking against pests," he said. Zink at Live Science
. thorough study of the stomach of the mummy iceman. German hikers discovered the frozen remains during a hike in the Italian Alps in 1991. Since then, researchers have discovered the details of Ötzi's life by studying his remains and his belongings, including 61 tattoos , arthritis, defective teeth and a possible case of Lyme disease. The researchers even found that Otzi had sharpened his tools a few days before his badbadination.
However, the ice man's diet had remained somewhat elusive. The previous badyzes were only interested in the large and small intestines of Ötzi, because until a recent CT scanner, scientists had absolutely no idea of it. location of the stomach of Ötzi.
The new scanner revealed that the stomach of the iceman had rebadembled mummification process. So, the scientists got to work, badyzing the contents of the stomach to understand what Ötzi had swallowed before his disappearance.
One thing was sure: the Ötzi diet was rich in fat, but no cheese, Mr. Zink previously studied the senior researcher Frank Maixner, a microbiologist at the Research Institute of the United States. Eurac for studies on the mummy. Rather, the fat came from an animal that Ötzi had recently eaten, probably ibex ( Capra ibex ), says Zink.
This discovery made sense, previous research having revealed that Ötzi was suffering from lactose intolerance and therefore had problem eating dairy products, Zink added. The glacier would have probably needed the calories from this fatty meal to help him climb the Alps where he lived, according to the researchers.
"The high and cold environment is particularly difficult for human physiology and requires optimal nutrition to prevent rapid starvation and loss of energy," Zink said in a statement. "The ice man seemed to be fully aware that fat represented an excellent source of energy."
However, there is no way of knowing whether Ötzi ate meat was fresh or dried, the researchers noted. The driver probably ate the meal between 30 minutes and 2 hours before an ambush attack killed him, Zink added.
The team plans to study the microbiome of Ötzi. Since humans have not eaten processed foods, "we will try to rebuild it as much as possible and compare it to modern people" to see how bacteria live in humans have changed over the millennia, Zink
The study was published online today (July 12) in the journal Current Biology.
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