Europe’s oldest mummified human, found lying in an alpine glacier more than five thousand years after he died, had eaten a bacon-like snack before he died, scientists have concluded.
Albert Zink, a German expert on mummies, revealed the results of tests conducted on the remarkably well-preserved corpse to an audience in Vienna yesterday, telling them: “We’ve analysed the meat’s nanostructure and it looks like he ate very fatty, dried meat, most likely bacon.”
The meat probably came from wild goat but was made in much the same way as modern-day Tyrolean “speck”, he added, which is produced through salt curing and smoking.
The frozen remains of the mummy, which has been nicknamed Ötzi, were found in 1991 in the Ötztal Alps in South Tyrol, northern Italy, where he lived 5,300 years ago.
Forensic scientists have determined much about him: his age — about 45 — the fact that he died from an arrow wound, his height, weight and hair colour.
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Now researchers using “non-invasive diagnostics and genomic sequencing” have come up with the details of his last supper. The team also found evidence that Ötzi had carried an ulcer-inducing bacterium in his gut, and as a result may have suffered from stomach aches.
“Nevertheless, he was in pretty good shape”, Dr Zink wrote in the US magazine Science this month.
As well as dining on the rasher of goat, Ötzi was found wearing the remains of a coat made from the same species, as well as a hat fashioned from bearskin.
It is estimated that he may have gone without food for up to 30 hours before he was killed. Evidence of grains was also found in his stomach.