ZOE Science & Nutrition - Most replayed moment: Lessons from a 5000-year-old diet | Frank Maixner & Tim Spector

Episode Date: March 31, 2026

Today we’re going prehistoric. We have to stay sharp at ZOE. Nutritional science moves fast, so it’s important for us to stay up to date with new discoveries and the latest advice.  However, every now and then, it helps to look back - way back. In this recap, we’re turning to a rather unusual teacher: a 5,000-year-old Iceman, preserved in ice and carrying clues about the diet of our ancient ancestors. I’m joined by Frank Maixner and Professor Tim Spector to uncover what this prehistoric man ate and what those findings can teach us about our diet today. 🌱 Try our new plant based wholefood supplement - Daily30+ *Naturally high in copper which contributes to normal energy yielding metabolism and the normal function of the immune system 📚Books by our ZOE Scientists The Food For Life Cookbook Every Body Should Know This by Dr Federica Amati Food For Life by Prof. Tim Spector Ferment by Prof. Tim Spector Free resources from ZOE How to eat in 2026 - Discover ZOE’s 8 nutrition principles for long-term health Live Healthier: Top 10 Tips From ZOE Science & Nutrition Gut Guide - For a Healthier Microbiome in Weeks  Better Breakfast Guide Have feedback or a topic you'd like us to cover? Let us know here Listen to the full episode here

Hello and welcome to Zoe Recap, where each week we find the best bits from one of our podcast episodes to help you improve your health. We have to stay sharp at Zoe. Nutrition science moves fast, so it's important for us to stay up to date with new discoveries and the latest advice. However, every now and then, it helps to look back, way back. And in this recap, we're turning to a rather unusual teacher, a 5,000-year-old ice man, preserved in ice and can. carrying clues about the diet of our ancient ancestors. I'm joined by Frank Maxner and Professor Tim Specter to uncover what this prehistoric man ate and what those findings can teach us about our diet today.

Frank, can you tell us about what happened, I think about 30 years ago, high in the mountains, you know, between Italy and Austria? Yeah, it was in 1991 actually. So there was this couple from Nuremberg, Erica and Helmut Simon. They made holidays and they were on a hike in the mountains, in the alpine ridge between Austria and Italy. And it was quite late already at that day, and then they need to take a shortcut back to the

hut there. And when doing this, they stumbled over a body, which was still sticking half in the ice. And they immediately thought that this maybe is a hiker or skier who died up there, and they informed the hut owner. And he informed then the Italian police, which, then not felt responsible for this and they then said the Austrians should take over this case. And yeah, this body was recovered and it was for a long time not considered pressures. It took some days actually until an archaeologist had a look at this finding and it turned

out that it's a 5,300 year old mummy who died up there. And this was the start of this research on the Iceman actually. So they've discovered this 5,000 year old body sort of sticking out of. of the ice at the top of the Alps. Who was he? And what happened to him? It's a good question, actually. So some things we not yet know who he was actually. This would be a nice question to ask him. But it became more and more clear that he belonged to the so-called early European farmers, which already lived a settled lifestyle. They had access to domesticated animals and plants also. So, yeah, he lived and grew up also in this Italian Alps, so in this eastern Italian Alps.

And so what have we been able to discover about what he was eating? We were lucky because normally mammification, if it's not starting immediately, the degradation of body starts in the intestinal region. And here this mummification stops this, and we have still access to the intestinal contents, to the stomach content and also the lower intestines. And by analyzing this, we not only microscopically, but also molecularly, could see that he has eaten Ivex meat, actually, of this mountain goat, red deer meat. And in parallel, this was supplemented by cereals, ancient form, the einkorn wheat actually was part of his meal. And interesting was also the discovery of a toxic bracken fern, which definitely was also part of his meat, which we not yet can really identify.

why he has eaten this, so maybe in a young form where it's not so toxic. So it was composed of these parts. And a second thing which we see is 50% nearly was then also fat. So it was very lipid rich, very fatty rich diet to get the energy he needs up there. So this was another observation we had. Wasn't there something about the type of meat that was fatty meat rather than the lean bits. I remember reading something about that. Can you remind us how that deduction was made, that they ate the fatty bits of the meat, not the lean bits. That's true. So it was definitely intentionally sampled at the regions where the fat is more enriched. And these ibex, for example, normally the meat is quite fatless or not rich in fat. But certain regions, like in the neck or other

regions, you have quite accumulations of fats. And the iceman took these parts and used it as his diet also. So it was most likely than air-dried also. And we can imagine that it's in a form of a speck or in a form of air-dried fat meat consumed. For weeks, they hunted together and they needed to, of course, also to conserve and preserve this meat. And the best way to do this is really to air-dry. And I think you talked a bit about the fact that we were actually able to look at the health of his arteries. Could you just explain a bit? Because we often talk about everybody being completely healthy in these sort of ancient times. And I think actually you got some quite surprising results, didn't you? Yeah, that's actually really an interesting discovery, talking

about this maybe modern day diseases like arterioschlorosis. It's purring of the arteries, isn't it, that can lead to heart attacks and things like this? Yes. And he has really severe calcification already of his arteries also in the heart region already. And this is a little bit stands in contrast also to his lifestyle because he was slim, he was really hiking a lot. The diet you can of course argue now we have a snapshot only in the stomach content to have seen a lot of fat actually, but this maybe is just an exception. But the interesting thing when we now look also at other mummies from different regions like South America, also Egyptian mummies, we see always 30 to 40% of these mummies also

suffer the same level of cardiovascular diseases or calcification. actually. So our assumption is that we see this also in the Iceman, that there's a major also component coming from our genes or their genes. The Iceman has actually a high genetic predisposition to develop this kind of disease. And we see this also in other mummies, which show already the signs. And this seems to be independent from the diet, from the origin, from the population you belong to. And I think this brings us away a little bit from this. This is only a modern day disease linked to our lifestyles. I think we should also not forget this. And just remind us how we think he is?

Yeah, Iceman is 40 to 50 years. All right. So he was an early middle age man. So normally be quite unusual, even in modern times, to have heavy calcification of the arteries without it being genetic. So the genetic theory might be the one rather than diet or lifestyle related, given, unless he had some other disease we don't know about, but that seems most likely. So we've talked a bit about the diet, and I think that's already amazing that we can understand this, but you and your colleagues have managed to go further, right, and actually understand the bacteria, the microbiome that he had 5,000 years ago. Tell us about it.

This was actually also in cooperation with Nicola Sigata's group and others which are focusing on modern gut microorgans, actually. And what we saw there is that the Iceman still carries these traces of the gut microbiome, a community actually, and that we can confront this also to communities we know from modern persons. And this was quite surprising to see that he resembles not the gut microbiome we most likely carry in us, but more the one which indigenous populations also still carry nowadays. So populations which have more traditional diet, which have a different lifestyle to ours. So we called it also non-Westernized populations. And the Ismene was the first time also the proof that these non-vestonized populations

maybe are a good proxy, how the gut microbeum of our ancestors was. So this is really amazing. We're basically having this ability to look back 5,000 years and understand the microbes at that point. And 5,000 years is a lot of time for us. I guess for microbes that are potentially having another generation every 30 minutes. It's like some unimaginable number of generations. what was the most surprising thing that we found out when we look at the microbiome? Yeah, this difference to nowadays, and this is what you said already, 5,000 years seems to be not long,

but within this 5,000 years, there seemed to be changes going on. We not yet understand well when this happened, but there was clearly a higher diversity of microbes in the icemen. So strains we nowadays not carry anymore in our guts were present in the icemen, shifts of this gut community, which we see. And this is actually very surprising that within this very short time frame, we see diversity decay, similar to the decays in diversity in plant or animal kingdoms. And this potentially can be linked also to some other developments, diseases we nowadays know link to diet maybe. And when this decay or when this diversity change happened, this we are now currently investigating, actually.

And Tim, can you explain a bit for us of what this diversity means? Yes, diversity is a way of microbiologist generalizing a very complicated picture of our gut microbes into something that most people can understand. It's the way of saying how many different species there are in all the trillions of gut microbes in the average gut, you know, what that community looks like. And so a highly diverse gut microbiome is one, a bit like a garden where there are lots of flowers of all types flowering and the soil is incredibly rich. And there's hardly any room for weeds to grow. It's a very healthy community with, you know, one species helping another.

And it just looks beautiful all year round and a non-diverse gut microbiome looks more like an Arizona backyard with dust bowl. and toxic waste and other things going down. I'm not sure everyone in Arizona is going to like this particular positioning team. Not all gardens in Arizona. I like that. But I'm just trying to visit a more desert-like thing where there's a few sparse plants that have adapted to that rather rugged environment, and there might be cactuses and things like this.

So it's that large contrast you've got to bear in mind visually in how you might see your gut microbes. And we know that people with nearly all the common disease, as we're seeing today, of westernized societies which don't happen in non-Westernized societies, such as diabetes, such as obesity, such as autoimmune diseases, cancers, heart disease, etc., anything with chronic inflammation, plus even mental disorders as depression, autism spectrum disorders, they all have a reduced diversity compared to the healthier types of Western society. So we sort of generally link this number of species with health in a very broad sense of it.

What does this mean for us today and what's the actionable advice? I think it's this amazing story and insight is so much fun. But if I can't just go and get these microbes a day and I can't buy them in the store, what's the actionable advice that comes out of this, do you think? I think learning that when non-Westernized populations have better sets of microbes means that we should be generally thinking about reducing our antibiotic intake, particularly for our children, who generally have 18 courses of antibiotics by the time they're 20, certainly in the US and in most Western countries.

So we're overusing antibiotics, which is one reason that we've probably killed off a lot of our microbes, not being too sensitive about sterilizing everything and making sure that our children, particularly when the microbiome is really most responsive, given the chance to be outdoors and hug trees and eat dirt and play with animals like our ancestors did. And then finally, you know, improving our diet so that we don't pollute it with highly processed foods, chemicals,

and that we try and eat a rich diversity of plants. try and learn some of the lessons from our ancestors. I think that's to me the take-home message. We don't have all the answers, but I think there are some sensible things we could start to do now that would try and reverse some of this really bad trend in our biology. Thank you for listening to today's recap episode. I want to take 30 seconds to talk about something that's not talked about enough. Menopause. Over half the people on the planet experience perimenopause and menopause. Yet symptoms are often misunderstood or dismissed.

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