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The Iceman's Last Meal
sciencehabit writes "Less than two 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, according to a new study. Armed with Ötzi's newly sequenced genome and a detailed dental analysis, scientists have also found that the Iceman had brown eyes (not blue, as commonly assumed) and probably wasn't much of a tooth brusher. Dental analysis shows that the Iceman suffered a blunt force trauma to two teeth — possibly a blow to the mouth — at least several days before his death and was plagued by both periodontal disease and cavities."
Everyone knows primitive man was vegetarian. We are given a McDonalds palate at birth by our capitalist/consumer industrial processed food culture. They knew better.
Oh, and they weren’t violent either.
I thought they were talking about this guy. He's been in prison for a while, but he didn't get the death penalty.
For a minute I thought Val Kilmer had died.
They always tell me before the rise of civilization that human teeth were perfectly fine. That natural sweets like fruit fibers forced the sugar away before any real damage was done. That white flour and white sugar, removed from it's natural fibers do all the damage. And I know that is true to some extent, but I really don't think before that crap came that everyone was running around with perfect teeth.
So, was Oetzi from a civilization with all that bad stuff in that sense, since he's way younger than 10,000 years old? Or do human teeth really just suck that much? (FWIW, I wish all our teeth were like baby teeth, constantly displaced and renewed every 5-7 years).
There's claims that he may have been moved after death and that he may have been killed in or around a settlement off the Alps.
That aside, the continuing research is building up an amazing picture. I assume they've done the strontium isotope testing on the teeth to locate exactly where he was originally from.
What's more, glaciers in the Alps and across Scandanavia are releasing enormous amounts of organics, allowing for a much better picture of the time to be built. The main concern had by archaeologists is that the amount they're able to collect (due to really insignificant resources) is tiny compared to what's actually being released. Cloth and wood, when released by a glacier, will rot extremely quickly if efforts are not made to preserve it (not the seconds shown in Indiana Jones IV, but months to maybe a year or so) but may be removed and destroyed/buried by mud, animals, build-up of the terminal morraine, etc, long before that.
What we do have, though, is a picture of an era within that area that is incredibly comprehensive. We only know about the use of colour in early mediterranian clothes because X-Ray fluorescence on Greek and Roman sculptures reveals the paints used. We actually have dyed cloth from Otzi's time. We know the Romans loved wine and beer, from their writings and from residue in containers, but we've actually found seeds in the process of being malted in German and France again contemporary with Otzi along with other ingredients in their raw form. Also from that era, we have found doors that are painted and have latches, ropes, longbows, shoes and other artifacts, most of which are either completely or almost completely intact. That is impressive.
Provided more enthusiasts in Europe go out, find, salvage as necessary, and report organics to make up for the lack of archaeological resources, we are quite capable of building a picture of Bronze Age and Iron Age Europe that is more comprehensive than our knowledge of early-to-mid Medieval times.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
...did he at least have clean underwear?
it's not just human teeth that suck, or that civilization/agriculture ruined our teeth. Animal conservation people often tranquilize lions in the wild to relocate them/take blood samples for studies, etc... very often they find the lion with cavities and gingivitis, even though it's been living on a diet of meat exclusively (as all lions have for millenia).
I saw this on NatGeo once -- scientists tranqulized a lion took some samples and gave it a checkup, and one of the things they did was to drill out a cavitity and fill it, and give him a dental cleaning (with dental floss). It was pretty funny.
Teeth found as least as far back as Neanderthal are almost universally worn flat in anyone who survived to adulthood. Also, abscesses, often wearing away bone all the way up into the sinuses, are very common in pleistocene remains from the Americas. (The individuals must have been in constant pain for years. Ouch.)
We've also found a lot of teeth that were badly decayed, and forcibly extracted. Sometimes in pieces. Ice age dentistry wasn't pretty.
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
My dentist is a beekeeper and sells honey at his office. He says that honey is naturally anti-bacterial and doesn't cause tooth decay because it's the acid generated by bacteria that damages tooth enamel.
Easy enough to test: eat a mouthful of honey, and then take an oral swab. Test it for bacteria.
The reason that honey is anti-bacterial is simple osmotic pressure: the sugar concentration is so high that bacteria get dehydrated. Pure sugar works exactly the same way. Dilution, no shock, cancels out the effect.
However, a dentist selling honey as a tooth preservative? Might be a good business plan.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
I am not an anthropologist, but were there not many cultures where food was chewed for elder people that lacked the teeth to do it themselves?
Probably remember it from a documentary or some movies, but I would love an anthropologist to chime in on this.
If he's getting a colonoscopy as part of a dental procedure, I'd say his dental problem is far from simple...
A lot of the life expectancy is lowered because of death at child birth (both children and women) and also in the fragile toddler years. There were people who regularly lived to 40s/50s/60s.
Thank you. Really, thank you. That statistic gets thrown around all the time, and as you point out, it's bullshit. Life expectancy was lower because lots of babies and children died. Polio, Measles, smallpox, malnutrition....childbirth [as you stated], whatever.
Just because life expectancy was in the order of 30 years, absolutely does not mean that there was ever a time in human history that healthy 30 year olds were just spontaneously dropping dead.
sustainable living
Honey is not antiseptic due simply to a high sugar rate.
This page says that honey is antiseptic in various ways and that some types of honey are more antiseptic than others. And this research seems to suggest that a part of the antibacterial activity might be of plant origin and the major part of the antibacterial activity of honeydew honey is of bee origin.
Put simply: It's complex, and we don't know it all yet.
Medical grade types of honey are still being discovered. "Medical grade honey"? Yes, this article claims that eight species of problematic wound pathogens, including those with high levels of innate or acquired antibiotic resistance, were killed by 4.0–14.8% honey , meaning that they're effective even when diluted.
It's an intersting read, especially the 1st article.