1,200 years ago, a man died of severe constipation and his colon had swollen to six times its normal diameter.
A section of the man’s large intestine was analyzed in 2016. The feces were extremely well preserved and had survived to the present day. C: C: Kirsten A. Verostick et al. 2019.
No one wants to die, but when we do, we hope for two things: that it’s painless, and that thousands of years from now someone won’t examine your remains and tell your grandchildren that “we suffered from severe constipation”.
In 2019, archaeologists discovered the remains of a man who suffered a fatal case of constipation and whose large intestine swelled to six times its normal diameter.
The Skiles mummy was found in the Lower Pecos Canyon District of South Texas. Nearly 150 mummified bodies have been found in the area, but an adult male from around 1,200 years ago was of particular interest for the study because his naturally mummified remains were so well preserved.
In addition to having all the hair rarely found in other mummified remains, this man also had a very large, dried mass of feces covering most of the gastrointestinal tract, according to the study’s authors.
Given the size of the feces, the fecal matter allowed the researchers to study the man’s diet in the months before his death. His hair also allowed the team to analyze his diet.
By comparing this diet with typical diets of the time (diets that were partly inferred from the feces of other individuals), the team was able to discover a surprising amount of information about the man’s last months.
Among the information gathered was that the man died of parasitic Chagas disease, and that in the months leading up to his death he had been unable to absorb enough proteins and had probably become immobilized.
This information is important because someone would have had to bring him food sources as well as provide for his daily needs. So he would have received care from the community when he died.
The fact that he consumed an unusual amount of locusts among the finds also provides evidence that he was well cared for at the end of his 35-45 year life.
Professor Karl Reinhard of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln said, “They were taking the legs off the grasshoppers. So they gave him mostly the liquid-rich body, which is the part of the grasshopper that can be crushed. It was high in protein, but also high in moisture. So it should have been easier for him to eat in the early stages of his experience of colon growth.”
Despite the attention, the man’s death was not pretty. Examining the fecal matter with a scanning electron microscope, Reinhard and his team found phytoliths, microscopic plant matter that often survives the digestive process.
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