What Would Your Diet Have Looked Like 5,000 Years Ago?

We can learn a lot about our past by the foods that were a part of our diet. It tells us what foods were available, what animals roamed the earth, and where people congregated to find them. Were they nomads or farmers, hunters or gatherers? It's too bad that we can't look back all that far in history to discern diet. Or maybe we can.

The remains of one ancient Iceman are unlocking the keys to where our diet was 5,200 years. Found in the Tyrolean Alps, Otzi the Iceman had a stomach full of ibex meat and cereal when he died, likely after being attacked. We've learned a lot from Otzi by studying what was in his stomach, bowels, and what he was wearing.

This single iceman is unlocking the keys to the Neolithic period or the New Stone Age, a period characterized by the rise of human technologies such as farming, domestication of animals, and the development of tools. Otzi has a wealth of stories to tell us about human history.

According to the Washington Post:

[R]esearchers have extensively studied his gear — copper ax, hide and leather clothing, and accessories — and his body. Previous research on his meals focused on fecal material removed from his bowels. The contents showed that he dined on red deer meat and possibly cereal about four hours before his death.

Beyond his bowels, we've more recently begun to study his stomach. Again, the Washington Post:

When they took a sample of the stomach contents and sequenced the DNA of the animal fibers they found, they discovered that Otzi, just 30 to 120 minutes before his death, had dined on the meat of an Alpine ibex, an animal that frequents high elevations.

Otzi seemed to have passed between the ages of 35 and 40 years old but thanks to his precisely intact remains, we're able to step back 5,000 years to what our diet may have looked like then.

Like this? Follow my Twitter feed.