脰TZI, the 5000-year-old frozen mummy found six years ago in the Alps, may have had a similar diet to modern Westerners.
Ra煤l Cano of the California Polytechnic in San Luis Obispo, Friedl Tiefenbrunner of the University of Innsbruck and their team took samples from 脰tzi’s gut using an endoscope. They found bacteria closely matching those in Europeans today, suggesting he ate similar food, Cano told the American Society for Microbiology’s annual meeting in Miami Beach last week.
“He had the same type of diet as we do, with meat and vegetables, but he drank contaminated water,” says Cano. 脰tzi’s gut contained the remains of an egg of the whipworm Trichuris trichuria, an intestinal parasite, and the waterborne bacterium Vibrio metschnikovii, a close relative of the microorganism that causes cholera.
