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

Summary

---

ZOE Science & Nutrition: Most Replayed Moment

Episode: Lessons from a 5,000-year-old Diet
Guests: Dr. Frank Maixner & Prof. Tim Spector
Host: Jonathan Wolf
Date: March 31, 2026

---

Episode Overview

In this special recap, Jonathan Wolf is joined by Dr. Frank Maixner and Professor Tim Spector to explore groundbreaking insights from the preserved remains of the 5,300-year-old Alpine “Iceman.” Together, they uncover what the Iceman’s diet, health, and gut microbiome reveal about how our distant ancestors lived—and what these findings can teach us about nutrition, chronic disease, and gut health today.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Remarkable Discovery of the Iceman [00:53–02:09]

• Discovery Story: In 1991, Erika and Helmut Simon stumbled upon a partially frozen body high in the Alps near the Italy-Austria border, initially thinking it was a modern accident victim. Archaeologists later revealed its true age—over five millennia old.
• Who Was He?: The Iceman belonged to early European farming communities, leading a settled lifestyle with access to domesticated plants and animals, living in the eastern Italian Alps.

Quote:
"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."
— Frank Maixner [01:38]

---

2. What Did the Iceman Eat? [02:35–04:40]

• Preserved Stomach & Intestines: Unusually well-preserved, allowing rare analysis of intestinal content.
• Main Dietary Components:
  • Meat: Ibex (mountain goat) and red deer, specifically fatty cuts, likely for high energy needs in harsh conditions.
  • Cereal: Ancient einkorn wheat.
  • Plant: Toxic bracken fern—its purpose remaining uncertain.
  • Fat Content: Around 50% of the meal consisted of fat, critical for survival in the alpine environment.
  • Meat Preservation: Likely air-dried, similar to modern speck, allowing for longer storage.

Quote:
"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."
— Frank Maixner [03:32]

• Intentional Choice of Fatty Cuts: The Iceman intentionally selected fatty portions of meat, not the lean cuts.

Quote:
"It was definitely intentionally sampled at the regions where the fat is more enriched... The iceman took these parts and used it as his diet."
— Frank Maixner [04:00]

---

3. Ancient Health: Heart Disease Is Not Just Modern [04:40–06:48]

• Vascular Health: Despite a physically active lifestyle, the Iceman had severe arterial calcifications—early signs of heart disease.
• Wider Pattern: Similar calcifications appear in diverse ancient mummies worldwide.
• Genetic Predisposition Over Lifestyle?: The findings suggest a strong genetic role in heart disease, challenging the idea that it is solely a modern phenomenon linked to diet and activity.

Quotes:
"He has really severe calcification already of his arteries also in the heart region..."
— Frank Maixner [05:10]

"We see always 30 to 40% of these mummies also suffer the same level of cardiovascular diseases... this brings us away a little bit from this. This is only a modern day disease linked to our lifestyles."
— Frank Maixner [05:33]

---

4. The Iceman’s Microbiome: Lessons from Ancient Guts [06:48–09:07]

• First Look at an Ancient Gut Microbiome: Collaborative research enabled analysis of preserved gut bacteria.
• Contrast with Modern Microbiomes: The composition resembled that of present-day non-westernized or indigenous populations, not those in industrialized societies.
• Loss of Diversity: Iceman’s gut housed a greater microbial diversity, including strains no longer typically found in modern humans—a change occurring within just 5,000 years.

Quote:
"He resembles not the gut microbiome we most likely carry in us, but more than one, which indigenous populations also still carry nowadays."
— Frank Maixner [07:18]

"There was clearly a higher diversity of microbes in the iceman... strains we nowadays not carry anymore in our guts were present in the iceman."
— Frank Maixner [08:21]

---

5. Why Microbial Diversity Matters for Modern Health [09:07–11:10]

• Diversity Explained: Prof. Spector compares a diverse microbiome to a vibrant, healthy garden versus an arid desert, linking microbial richness to overall well-being.
• Health Outcomes: Lower gut microbial diversity correlates with modern diseases—obesity, diabetes, autoimmune disorders, cancer, and even mental health conditions.

Quotes:
"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..."
— Tim Spector [09:22]

"People with nearly all the common diseases... such as diabetes, such as obesity, such as autoimmune diseases, cancers, heart disease, etc.,... all have a reduced diversity compared to the healthier types of western society."
— Tim Spector [10:36]

---

6. Takeaway Advice: Can We Reclaim Ancient Gut Health? [11:10–12:37]

• Antibiotics & Microbial Loss: Overuse of antibiotics, especially in children, diminishes lifelong microbial richness.
• Lifestyle Recommendations:
  • Be cautious with antibiotics; reserve for necessity.
  • Avoid excessive sterilization; encourage interaction with natural environments (“hug trees and eat dirt and play with animals”).
  • Prioritize a plant-rich, diverse diet and minimize highly processed foods.
• Long-Term Vision: While we can’t buy or replace lost microbes easily, adopting these habits may help slowly recover some lost diversity.

Quote:
"We should... be generally thinking about reducing our antibiotic intakes... making sure that our children, particularly when the microbiome is really most responsive, are given the chance to be outdoors and hug trees and eat dirt and play with animals like our ancestors did."
— Tim Spector [11:28]

"Improving our diet so that we don't pollute it with highly processed foods... try and eat a rich diversity of plants and try and learn some of the lessons from our ancestors."
— Tim Spector [12:11]

---

Notable Moments & Quotes

• On Ancient Heart Disease:
  "This seems to be independent from the diet, from the origin, from the population you belong to... I think this brings us away a little bit from this. This is only a modern day disease linked to our lifestyles."
  — Frank Maixner [05:33]

• Tim Spector’s garden metaphor:
  "A highly diverse gut microbiome is one a bit like a garden where there are lots of flowers of all types..."
  — Tim Spector [09:22]

• Gut health actionable advice:
  "Giving our children the chance to be outdoors and hug trees and eat dirt and play with animals like our ancestors did."
  — Tim Spector [11:30]

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

• [00:53] Discovery of the Iceman
• [02:35] Insights into Ancient Diet
• [04:40] Arterial calcification and health
• [06:48] The Iceman’s microbiome
• [09:07] Microbial diversity explained
• [11:10] Practical takeaways and advice

---

Conclusion: Lessons from a 5,000-Year-Old Diet

• The Iceman gives us a rare, tangible snapshot of ancestral European diets, health, and gut biology.
• Many “modern” health issues may have deep genetic roots, while cultural shifts have rapidly changed our gut microbiome.
• We can’t reclaim the exact microbes of the past, but we can borrow dietary patterns (high diversity, less processing) and reduce antibiotic overuse for long-term benefits.

Final Takeaway:
"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."
— Tim Spector [12:24]

Transcript

[A]

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 iceman preserved in ice and carrying clues about the diet of our ancient ancestors. I'm joined by Frank Maxner and Professor Tim Spector to uncover what this prehistoric man ate and what those findings can teach us about our diet today.

[B]

Frank, can you tell us about what happened, I think about 30 years ago high in the mountains, you know, between Italy and Austria?

[C]

Yeah, it was in 1991 actually. So there was this couple from Nuremberg, Erika 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 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 precious. 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.

[B]

So they've discovered this 5,000 year old body sort of sticking out of the ice at the top of the Alps. Who was he and what happened to him?

[C]

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, 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. Yeah, he lived and grew up also in this Italian Alps. So in this eastern Italian Alps.

[B]

And so what have we been able to discover about what he was eating?

[C]

We were lucky because normally mummification, 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 ibex 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 this 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.

[D]

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 of how that deduction was made? That they ate the fatty bits of the meat, not the lean bits?

[C]

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 fat, less or not rich in fat, but certain regions like in the neck or other regions, you have quite accumulated of fats. And the iceman took these parts and used it as his diet also. So it was most likely then air dried also. And we can imagine that it's in a form of a speck or in the 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 it.

[B]

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?

[C]

Yeah, that's actually really an interesting discovery. Talking about this, maybe modern day diseases like atherosclerosis and purring of the arteries,

[B]

isn't it that can lead to heart attacks and things like this.

[C]

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 calcifications 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. So 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 these 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

[D]

this and just remind us how old we think he is.

[C]

Eisman is 40 to 50 years.

[D]

All right, so he was early middle aged 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.

[B]

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.

[C]

This was actually also in cooperation with Nicolas Egarter's group and others, which are focusing on modern gut microbiomes actually. And what we saw there is that the Iceman still carries these traces of the gut microbiome 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 than one, which indigenous populations also still carry nowadays. So populations which have more traditional diet, which have a different lifestyle to ours. So we call it also non westernized populations. And Iceman was the first time also the proof that these non westernized populations maybe are a good proxy how the gut microbiome of our ancestors was.

[B]

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?

[C]

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 seem to be changes going on. We not yet understand well when this happened, but there was clearly a higher diversity of microbes in the iceman. So strains we nowadays not carry anymore in our guts were present in the iceman 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 linked to diet maybe. And when this decay or when this diversity change happened, this we are now currently investigating actually.

[B]

And Tim, can you explain a bit for us what this diversity means?

[D]

Yes, diversity is a way of microbiologists 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 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 bowls and toxic waste and other things going down it.

[B]

I'm not sure everyone in Arizona is going to like this particular positioning timber.

[D]

Not all gardens in Arizona are like that. But I'm just trying to envisage more desert like thing where there's a few sparse plants, you know, 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 diseases 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, et cetera, 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.

[B]

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?

[D]

I think learning that non westernized populations have better sets of microbes means that we should be generally thinking about reducing our antibiotic intakes, 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, are given the chance to be outdoors and hug trees and eat dirt and play with animals like our ancestors did. And then finally 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 and try and learn some of the lessons from our ancestors, I think that to me is 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.

[A]

As you can imagine hosting this podcast, running Zoe, juggling family life, it all keeps me pretty busy. So I try as best I can to stay energized and show up well in all those parts of my life by fueling my body with the right food, by exercising, and by adding a scoop of daily 30 to my meals every day. If you haven't heard of Daily 30 yet, it's the gut supplement. Designed by our gut health scientists here at Zoe. It's made of over 30 high quality hand picked plants, including seaweed, fungi and different types of fiber. Better yet, it contains ingredients that support gut health, digestion and energy, which is ideal for packed calendars and busy lives. Simply add one scoop a day to any meal for an extra boost of fiber and plant diversity. And because it tastes delicious on just about anything and adds a satisfying crunch, it quite quickly slots into your life, becoming a daily, healthy habit you'll always have time for. By the way, whenever we talk about Daily 30 as a good source of fiber, we're required to say that it contains 4 grams of total fat per serving. Obviously, that's all amazing healthy fats from plants, so order yours [e-mail] daily30. Thanks for listening and see you next time.