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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

Before He Died, Ötzi the Iceman Ate a Greasy, Fatty Meal [smithsonianmag.com]

We know quite a bit about Ötzi the Iceman, the 5,300-year-old individual whose remarkably well-preserved remains were found in the Italian Alps in 1991. We know that Ötzi was murdered; he was shot with an arrow [nytimes.com] that went through his armpit and into his subclavian artery. We know that he was covered in tattoos [discovermagazine.com], that he had sharpened his tools [livescience.com] shortly before he was killed, that he had a gravelly voice [smithsonianmag.com], that he was lactose intolerant [nytimes.com]. And now, as Laura Geggel reports for Live Science [livescience.com], researchers have pieced together a picture of what Ötzi ate just before he died: a hearty, fatty meal.

In a study published recently in Current Biology [cell.com] [open, DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2018.05.067] [DX [doi.org]], researchers explain how they used microscopic techniques to analyze the contents of Ötzi's stomach; the team was comprised of experts in the studies of genetic material, fats, protein and metabolism.

[...] The team was able to identify 167 animal and plant proteins in Ötzi's stomach, and they also determined the components of his last meal: cereals made from einkorn wheat, along with red deer and ibex meat. Notably, Ötzi had also eaten a hefty serving of ibex fat; according to George Dvorsky of Gizmodo [gizmodo.com], 46 percent of his stomach contents was made up of animal fat residues.

Ötzi the Iceman [wikipedia.org].

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