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| credits Nova Online |
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| The Iceman's Last Meal |
| Not everything passing through the Iceman's gut had been swallowed intentionally, or was even desirable. Oeggl also found the eggs of the human whipworm. Many people alive today who do not live in areas with flush toilets also carry the worm, which can cause unpleasant symptoms like stomach ache and diarrhea, or even lead to malnutrition. The scientists have no way of knowing whether the Iceman had any such complaints. The sample also contained many different varieties of pollen, whose strange and beautiful forms Oeggl saw under the electron microscope. Though some peoples are known to eat pollen, Oeggl believed that the quantity in his colon was too small to represent a meal. Instead, the pollen accidentally ended up in the man's stomach because they either had landed in food or water he ingested, or were inhaled and became trapped in saliva which he then swallowed. Scientists had long wondered where the Iceman was coming from and where he was headed, but until the discovery of the pollen inside the corpse, no scientist had any convincing documentation for his last day. But the pollen provided a snapshot of the environment the Iceman was exposed to in the hours before his death. |
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| The majority of the pollen came from the hop hornbeam tree, which grows in a warm environment. As soon as Oeggl recognized it under his microscope lens, he not only knew which side of the mountain the Iceman had been on shortly before his death, but also the season in which he died. The hop hornbeam tree blooms between March and June, and because the sperm inside the pollen grain, which normally decays after a short exposure to air or water, was still intact, Oeggl believed it had to have been absorbed relatively soon after its release from the tree. The nearest stands of that tree could have grown to the south of the Hauslabjoch, at least five or six hours away by foot. The high valleys to the north are just too cold to sustain it. |
| Three grains of Ostrya carpinifolia (Hophornbeam) pollen magnified 1600x |
| The pollen of this particular tree was, therefore, one key to understanding the Iceman's last hours. It meant that the Iceman was almost certainly in the valley within half a day of his death. Previously scientists had speculated that the Iceman had died in the late summer, when he was surprised by an early storm while trying to cross the pass. Oeggl readily acknowledges that scientists may never know what prompted the Iceman to leave the relatively hospitable valley with no water or food to speak of (a single sloe berry was found with his remains) and try to cross the mountain at a time of year when several feet of snow easily could have obscured the topography of the steep and rocky Alpine ridge. But his own interest in the Iceman's demise is not yet exhausted. He expects that his meticulous analysis of the botanical and archaeological material recovered from the bottom of the shallow in which the man died will soon reveal more details about the circumstances of the Iceman's death. |
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