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In a presentation at the Seventh World Congress on Mummy Studies, researchers from the Institute for Mummies and the Iceman revealed that they had finally located the iceman known as Otzi’s stomach and determined his last meal. They were also able to successfully sequence his entire genome. Researchers from the Institute for Mummies and the Iceman in Italy divided the presentation into three different topics. The first part of the presentation was given by microbiologist Frank Maixner. He had recently examined old tomography scans taken of Otzi back in 2005 and was able to finally locate the stomach which was...

Less than 2 hours before he hiked his last steps in the Tyrolean Alps 5000 years ago, Ötzi the Iceman fueled up on a last meal of ibex meat. That was the conclusion of a talk here last week at the 7th World Congress on Mummy Studies, during which researchers—armed with Ötzi's newly sequenced genome and a detailed dental analysis—also concluded that the Iceman had brown eyes and probably wasn't much of a tooth brusher. The Iceman, discovered in the Italian Alps in 1991 some 5200 years after his death, has been a gold mine of information about Neolithic life,...

From the analysis of the intestinal contents of the 5,200-year-old Iceman from the Eastern Alps, Professor James Dickson from the University of Glasgow in the UK and his team have shed some light on the mummy's lifestyle and some of the events leading up to his death. By identifying six different mosses in his alimentary tract, they suggest that the Iceman may have travelled, injured himself and dressed his wounds. The Iceman is the first glacier mummy to have fragments of mosses in his intestine. This is surprising as mosses are neither palatable nor nutritious and there are few reports...

Blood residue on spear points and other ancient stone tools made by American Indians thousands of years ago is providing scientists based at the Savannah River Site with... interesting information that indicates what animals those early people hunted and when huge Pleistocene creatures such as mammoths and mastodons might have ceased to exist... The tools they looked at were made anywhere from 13,000 to 500 or 600 years ago. They were found at a Carolina bay at the Savannah River Site known as Flamingo Bay, at other locations in the CSRA and in the Fort Bragg area in eastern North...

Will Dunham, Reuters Jun. 26, 2014 Don't laugh, but the discovery of the oldest known human poop is offering valuable scientific insight into the life of Neanderthals who lived in Spain some 50,000 years ago. Scientists said on Wednesday they found five samples of human fecal matter at an archeological site called El Salt, in the floor of a rock shelter where Neanderthals once lived. Analysis of the samples provided a new understanding of the diet of this extinct human species, offering the first evidence that Neanderthals were omnivores who also ate vegetables as part of their meat-heavy diet, they...

Fossilized feces offer new evidence that Neanderthals ate both meat and plants. Chemical analysis confirmed the oldest-known ancient human fecal matter, according to a study published yesterday (June 25) in PLOS ONE. Previous isotope studies of bones suggested Neanderthals were primarily meat-eaters. Analyses of tartar from their teeth have indicated they may have also eaten plants, although some researchers noted that these plant remains could be traces from the stomach contents of herbivore prey. Stool, however, is "the perfect evidence because you’re sure it was consumed," study author Ainara Sistiaga from the University of La Laguna in Spain told BBC...

Scientists excavating an archaeological site in southern Spain have finally gotten the real poop on Neandertals, finding that the Caveman Diet for these quintessential carnivores included substantial helpings of vegetables. Using the oldest published samples of human fecal matter, archaeologists have found the first direct evidence that Neandertals in Europe cooked and ate plants about 50,000 years ago... ...the team was able to detect the chemical byproducts created by bacteria in the gut in the digestion of cholesterol from meat, as well as sterols and stanols, which are lipids in plants that are similar to cholesterol. The tests revealed that...

Researchers Who Provided Key Evidence For Gluten Sensitivity Have Now Thoroughly Shown That It Doesn't Exist Jennifer WelshMay 15, 2014, 3:37 PMIn one of the best examples of science working, a researcher who provided key evidence of (non-celiac disease) gluten sensitivity recently published follow-up papers that show the opposite. The first follow-up paper came out last year in the journal Gastroenterology. Here's the backstory that makes us cheer: The study was a follow up on a 2011 experiment in the lab of Peter Gibson at Monash University. The scientifically sound — but small — study found that gluten-containing diets can...

Debate between plant based diet and Paleo diet.

'Rice theory' explains north-south China cultural differences, study shows A new cultural psychology study has found that psychological differences between the people of northern and southern China mirror the differences between community-oriented East Asia and the more individualistic ...

The Batavians, who lived in the Netherlands at the start of the Christian era were far more Roman than was previously thought. After just a few decades of Roman occupation, the Batavians had become so integrated that they cooked, built and bathed in a Roman manner. Dutch researcher Stijn Heeren... studied excavated artefacts and traces of settlements and burial fields in the neighbourhood of Tiel. In Dutch history, the Batavians are often presented as a brave people who resisted a cruel oppressor. But Stijn Heeren has now demonstrated that these 'simple people' also adopted a lot of Roman customs. According...

Central-east Mexico gave birth to the domesticated chili pepper—now the world's most widely grown spice crop—reports an international team of researchers, led by a plant scientist at the University of California, Davis. Results from the four-pronged investigation—based on linguistic and ecological evidence as well as the more traditional archaeological and genetic data—suggest a regional, rather than a geographically specific, birthplace for the domesticated chili pepper. That region, extending from southern Puebla and northern Oaxaca to southeastern Veracruz, is further south than was previously thought, the researchers found. The region also is different from areas of origin that have been suggested...

REGULAR meals of mammoth meat helped some early human tribes to expand more quickly than their largely vegetarian contemporaries, according to a genetic study. Human populations in east Asia about 30,000 years ago developed at dramatically different rates, following a pattern that appears to reflect the availability of mammoths and other large game. In the part of the region covering what is now northern China, Mongolia and southern Siberia, vast plains teemed with mammals such as mammoths, mastodons and woolly rhinoceroses and the number of early human beings grew between 34,000 and 20,000 years ago. Further south, where the terrain...

Contrary to their hunting reputation, Stone Age Siberians killed mammoths only every few years when they needed tusks for toolmaking, a new study finds. People living between roughly 33,500 and 31,500 years ago hunted the animals mainly for ivory, say paleontologist Pavel Nikolskiy and archaeologist Vladimir Pitulko of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Hunting could not have driven mammoths to extinction, the researchers report June 5 in the Journal of Archaeological Science. On frigid tundra with few trees, mammoth tusks substituted for wood as a raw material for tools, they propose. Siberian people ate mammoth meat after hunts, but food...

Researchers have found evidence to suggest that climate change, rather than humans, was the main factor that drove the woolly mammoth to extinction. A DNA analysis shows that the number of creatures began to decrease much earlier than previously thought as the world's climate changed. It also shows that there was a distinct population of mammoth in Europe that died out around 30,000 years ago. The results have published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The view many researchers had about woolly mammoths is that they were a hardy, abundant species that thrived during their time on the...

A juvenile mammoth, nicknamed "Yuka," was found entombed in Siberian ice near the shores of the Arctic Ocean and shows signs of being cut open by ancient people. The remarkably well preserved frozen carcass was discovered in Siberia as part of a BBC/Discovery Channel-funded expedition and is believed to be at least 10,000 years old, if not older. If further study confirms the preliminary findings, it would be the first mammoth carcass revealing signs of human interaction in the region. The carcass is in such good shape that much of its flesh is still intact, retaining its pink color. The...

Oslo — The Norwegian military said Tuesday it plans to put its troops on a vegetarian diet once a week in a bid to fight a new kind of enemy -- climate change. The army said its new meatless Mondays are meant to cut its consumption of ecologically unfriendly foods whose production contributes heavily to global warming. "It's a step to protect our climate. The idea is to serve food that's respectful of the environment," spokesman Eystein Kvarving told AFP. The diet has already been introduced at one of Norway's main bases and will soon be rolled out to all...

Sweden has become the first Western nation to develop national dietary guidelines that reject the popular low-fat diet dogma in favor of low-carb high-fat nutrition advice. The switch in dietary advice followed the publication of a two-year study by the independent Swedish Council on Health Technology Assessment. The committee reviewed 16,000 studies published through May 31, 2013. Butter, olive oil, heavy cream, and bacon are not harmful foods. Quite the opposite. Fat is the best thing for those who want to lose weight. And there are no connections between a high fat intake and cardiovascular disease. On Monday, SBU, the...

Doctoral student makes discovery on Neanderthal eating habits by Michael Moffett Hatchet Reporter Issue date: 2/7/08 A doctoral student studying hominid paleobiology has pioneered a method for analyzing reindeer bones from around 65,000 to 12,000 years ago, an accomplishment that allows scientists to further understand the eating habits of early humans. Early humans flocked to reindeer meat when the temperature dropped, J. Tyler Faith discovered. "We see a steady increase in the abundance of reindeer, associated with declines in summer temperature," Faith said. Faith analyzed bones from the Grotte XVI archaeological site in southern France in order to better understand...

Cannibalism May Have Wiped Out Neanderthals Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News Unhealthy Diets? Feb. 27, 2008 -- A Neanderthal-eat-Neanderthal world may have spread a mad cow-like disease that weakened and reduced populations of the large Eurasian human, thereby contributing to its extinction, according to a new theory based on cannibalism that took place in more recent history. Aside from illustrating that consumption of one's own species isn't exactly a healthy way to eat, the new theoretical model could resolve the longstanding mystery as to what caused Neanderthals, which emerged around 250,000 years ago, to disappear off the face of the Earth...