Ötzi’s last supper: mummified hunter's final meal revealed | Hacker News Reader

Ötzi’s last supper: mummified hunter's final meal revealed

theguardian.com

72 pointsdiodorus40 comments

> “The taste is really, well, it’s horrible,”

Ötzi probably liked it very much. Body of a hungry person learns to like tastes that give it the calories.

When I was starting to feed myself I was cooking rice. Forgot salt. It was dreadful. Forgot few times. Began to like the taste of overcooked unsalted rice after I satiated my hunger few times with it.

The keto and zerocarb (carnivore diet) communities on reddit are all pointing out the fact that 46% by volume of the sample was fat, indicating he gained 60%+ by calorie macro of energy from fat (and a large percentage of proteins). There is a compelling argument being made now that humans are more carnivore than omnivore for most of our history (10,000 of agriculture is blip on the radar for our species) and that we ate the whole animal. Yes, we can eat anything, but did we. And which food sources are we most adapted for? Hence The Omnivores Dilemma ... (good book)

It's not mentioned in The Guardian article but is mentioned in this one from Ars Technica that he also had atherosclerosis, something his high fat diet likely contributed to. I'm not 100% sold on trying to replicate the diet and lifestyle of people who probably did not live past what we now consider middle age. Particularly if I'm not living in the high reaches of the Alps.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/07/otzi-the-icemans-las...

As has been pointed out elsewhere[1], atherosclerosis is largely a genetic condition and is not necessarily related to a high-fat diet.

"In the new study, Zink and his colleagues found that Ötzi had several gene variants associated with cardiovascular disease, including one on the ninth chromosome that is strongly tied to heart troubles, the researchers reported today (July 30) in the journal Global Heart."[2]

Fun fact: Otzi also had Lyme disease.

Also, there is no evidence that Otzi's people died young because of their diets. He was 45, so approaching middle age, and died while making a high mountain traverse with an arrow in his back. I would bet anything he was physically sturdier and, with modern medical care, healthier than nearly everyone posting here.

[1] http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2012/02/iceman-was-medical-me...

2] https://www.livescience.com/47114-otzi-had-heart-disease-gen...

Likely or likely not? More recent evidence points to high carb - not high fat - as the real cause. Mcmuffins are higher in carbs than fats, by the way.

Also, infant/child mortality was much higher at that time - if you count people that lived past the 30s life expectancy was likely not that different from nowadays.

The researchers mention in other sources:

"Interestingly adipose fat, most likely from the ibex, made up about half of the stomach contents. The team says this amount was unexpected, but it makes sense given he was living in such a hostile climate."

"The high and cold environment is particularly challenging for the human physiology and requires optimal nutrient supply to avoid rapid starvation and energy loss," says Albert Zink, an author of the study. "The Iceman seemed to have been fully aware that fat represents an excellent energy source."

The actual paper mentions:

https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(18)...

"major proportion of plant reads belong to the species Pteridium aquilinum subsp. aquilinum and to members of the genus Triticum "

"the Triticum reads were more specifically assigned to chloroplast genomes of Triticum monococcum (einkorn) and Triticum urartu"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einkorn_wheat

Wheat.

It seem the Iceman not only ate deer mean but also... wheat, so probably some kind of bread.

Also, for the context: the Iceman lived "between 3400 and 3100 BCE." It can be that he lived at the same time as Egypt already wrote about its first pharaohs (c. 3150 BCE)! And Egypt's key for success for millennia was in its... wheat production.

Moreover, the "Iceman" got frozen in ice by accident, but at that time the last ice age was also over for cca 5000 years.

You can make a bread using braken flour. Is toxic at long term, but canker is not a problem if you are in a hurry and do not plan to live more than 50 years in any case. Probably they would combine Triticum and Pteridium together making a more palatable product.

Many things could point to stolen food and a harsh conditions. He was probably desperate for food. For a human eating fat regularly, he was very slim.

> (10,000 of agriculture is blip on the radar for our species)

Just to point out, those 10k years of agriculture are actually the most recent 10k years, with potentially huge selection pressure for periods during that time.

Little did Ötzi know, that thousands of years from now people would be so concerned with what he ate.

In fact they even went so far as to invent social networks so people could see what others recently ate.

I followed the 1986 Will Steger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Steger expedition to the North Pole quite closely at the time. I recall they spent a lot of time developing and preparing foods for the journey, in particular a high-fat pemmican. They also ate huge amounts of butter -- as much as they could stand.

It is interesting that in Otzi's time the necessity for a high fat diet in extreme cold conditions was understood -- or perhaps that is just how they came to live.

It's kind of amazing to me that we are still learning stuff from Ötzi's remains since they were discovered back in 1991.

Not to forget: He's the only person from his period, for thousands of years in either direction, who has a homepage on the Internet!

http://www.iceman.it/en/

During WW2, some british flyers went to the Soviet Union to fly for them. The first day the weather turned cold, the women brought out pots of boiling fat for them to eat. The airmen were disgusted. But after flying at high altitude in the bitter cold, they came to relish the breakfast of fat.

That sounds like an interesting read. I couldn't find anything in my brief google search. Do you have a lead I can follow? Thanks

I wish I had a source. I learned it from talking to a WW2 pilot.

My Dad used to compete with his brothers and sisters for the lard to make a sandwich of.

The lard was left over from cooking meat.

> "He clearly knew that fat is a high-energy source and he really composed his diet to survive at high altitude."

Perhaps there is more evidence behind this statement left out in the article? How do we know what he "clearly knew", did his diet differ greatly from others of the same region and time period?

> How do we know what he "clearly knew"

His stomach contained a lot of fat, but little mention of meat. The animal he ate had both fat and meat (probably more meat). The fat has been stated as not tasting nice, so he mush have preferentially eaten the fat.

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13962441 ?

It’s certainly not! The research paper now is from 12th of July this year, the brand new result:

https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(18)...

Wow! why is everyone down voting this guys comment? He never said this previous discussion was about the contents of his stomach he just said here is a thread about the same ancient dead guy. I for one am glad he posted it so I could learn more about the same topic. I find it disgusting that one guy lays out an unjustified criticism and you all jump on the band wagon and downvote him to oblivion. Rpvnwnki6 thanks for linking to the old thread about otzi I appreciated reading the related thread.

How is bacon of a clearly delicious animal - I am from the Alps, but never tasted the specific animal due to it being protected, and rightly so - considered of "horrible taste"? I guess they - maybe - didn't have salt, but they still had smoke, and - you know - sun.

Bacon is cured belly meat, whereas this was apparently pure fat. Fat tends to concentrate flavors, good or bad, and in this case it would have probably be very very gamey.

Edit: I think we have to see a difference between domesticated pigs, bred and raised for purpose, and their cured, seasoned, fat... and some fat hacked off a wild ibex. If you’ve ever had wild game you’ll know what I mean about gamey flavors. I can only imagine that some ice age ibex would be an acquired taste at best. Pig fat is also some of the most delicious, mild fat around, which is why it’s pigs used in that article.

You mean, like this? http://www.emikodavies.com/blog/italian-table-talk-lardo-di-... What is called "Lardo" is considered gourmet in most Italian / European traditional cuisines, and I can clearly see people in 2018 easily paying hundreds of dollars for a kilo of Ibex lard. I understand curing it might optimize the taste, but I would not call dried/smoked lard horrible.

I was going to say something like this. I have encountered "lard" in Europe quite a lot, but lard in the US is a little different. Anyway, "pure" fat is definitely an acquired taste and I agree with the GP that fat does concentrate all sorts of flavors good and bad and can be quite nasty.

And we are talking of flavours, but fat can concentrate also dangerous substances like lipophilic pesticides and venoms.

Did you read the article you linked to?

>The biggest mistake non-Italian speakers make with this absolutely delicious regional delicacy is that they translate it to “lard”, which, it must be strongly pointed out, it is not. What we call “lard” in English is known as strutto in Italian, which is used commonly for conserving, pastry making or frying. Lardo, however, is cured pig’s back fat, a unique type of salumi.

So, no, what is called 'lard' is not gourmet in Italian cuisine. That's a wholly separate thing from 'lardo', the delicacy you're referring to.

I have been in Eastern European countries that call it "lard".

It is irrelevant what "Lard" is in English in this context. What "Lardo" is in Italian, which is close to (a likely more cured version of) what was found in the stomach of Otzi, is nowadays considered a delicacy, and it is probably a long shot for researchers to assume the guy ate something of horrible taste, without further substantiating their claims.

> Lardo, however, is cured pig’s back fat.

In other words a type of fat is considered a delicacy. That does not mean all fat is a delicacy, but it does mean what the guy ate could have been fairly tasty.

Also, taste has a lot to do with how hungry you are. My father had fairly refined tastes and grew up in France, but said the best meal he ever ate was an can of beans when he was really hungry in the army.

EX: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/active/11315994/Ten-things-n...

A normal man burns about 2,500 calories in a day. We burn between 7,000 to 9,000. That means supplementing your dehydrated food with slabs of butter. In the first few days of the expedition, it tastes revolting, but then your body just craves the fat content and you eat the butter like blocks of cheese.

I've had pure pig fat before and made it myself off pig stomach or other parts. The first couple bites are good if you deep fry it to a deep brown colour but if you eat more than a medium size, you can easily get sick and have nausea from the oiliness, the fat is also more chewy than you expect and you can choke on it if you even have a medium piece in your mouth (I choked). If I was to eat animal fat, I would only eat a little bit and not too much. We seem to get nauseous from too much oil.

You would likely feel different you weren't already getting plenty of fat in your diet:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_poisoning#Observations

> I had now been several days without tasting any thing besides meat: I did not at all dislike this new regimen; but I felt as if it would only have agreed with me with hard exercise. I have heard that patients in England, when desired to confine themselves exclusively to an animal diet, even with the hope of life before their eyes, have hardly been able to endure it. Yet the Gaucho in the Pampas, for months together, touches nothing but beef. But they eat, I observe, a very large proportion of fat, which is of a less animalized nature; and they particularly dislike dry meat, such as that of the agouti. Dr. Richardson, also, has remarked, “that when people have fed for a long time solely upon lean animal food, the desire for fat becomes so insatiable, that they can consume a large quantity of unmixed and even oily fat without nausea:” this appears to me a curious physiological fact.

Don't get me wrong, I was almost instantaneously full from just eating a good-sized blob the size of my palm. Its a weird feeling, like you know you're missing all the other nutrients but you feel healthily full even though it was just a blob of fat and oil. Definitely also sick because of the normally fat-filled diet I probably had.

I vaguely recall reading that the stomach has receptors to get a rough idea of what nutrients food contains.

Aaah, here we go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stomach#Stomach_as_nutrition_s...

Lardo di Colonnata is delicious and I love it (spoiler: I am from Tuscany), but you just take a thin slice of it on your bread. You would never fill your stomach with it, even if you have money to throw away, because it is very salty, spicy and of course fat. I can feel nausea only thinking about eating on that alone. Even if ibex is as good as pig, I really do not envy Otzi's last meal.

Wild hog is some of the most disgusting meat I've ever had. Gamey strong flavored like I was eating meat flavored with sour weeds. The bacon was inedible it was so bad.

Absolutely nothing like the sweet tasty pig you get from the store.

Wild boar, or wild sow? In domestic pigs intended for slaughter, the males are castrated when a few days old in order to keep their meat from developing a gamey flavor. (Ask Iowa senator Joni Ernst if you want to learn how to develop that skill.) I could imagine wild boar meat would be inedible. But aside from that, diet will also impact the flavor if the meat. A diet heavy in acorns will probably add a pronounced pungency, for instance.

It was a 100 lb wild sow, covered in ticks and just nasty looking. I was excited until I tried all the cuts and realized how different wild is from domesticated.

Meat of old male goats is infamous for having a strong taste (Hormonally flavoured). They are routinely castrated or eaten young by this reason. A wild goat would taste even stronger. Maybe this is the reason of the journalist not enjoying the taste. Eating fat of a doe could be a different experience.

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