5,300-YEAR-OLD MAN ATE MEAT, CEREAL, FERNS

Scientists have worked out the final meal of a 5,300-year-old ice mummy known fondly as ‘Otzi the Iceman’ – and it was a surprisingly balanced, high-fat feast. Otzi’s frozen corpse was discovered by German tourists in the Eastern Italian Alps in 1991. Otzi was shot with an arrow five thousand years ago, apparently causing him to bleed to death, and his body was preserved by cold temperatures. Scientists claim they have been able to reconstruct his last meal, showing that he had eaten wild meat from ibex and red deer, cereals from einkorn wheat, and traces of toxic bracken – a sort of large fern that he may have taken as a medicine.
* Mmmmm – toxic bracken!
* That cereal he ate was probably Kellogg’s Honey Smacks and he got Salmonella, which is why he needed the medicine fern.
* It’s true – McDonald’s used to have ibex burgers on the menu back then.
* That was when their slogan was “McDonald’s – One served.”
* What did he do to make someone kill him with an arrow and leave him in the Alps? He probably complained one too many times about not having anything to eat except ibex, red deer and ferns.
* (To the tune of “Frosty the Snowman”): “Otzi the Iceman, was a jolly happy soul / ‘Til an arrow flew and it cut right through / And it left a great big hole.”