Last meals of condemned prisoners are historically known to date back centuries, but the tradition is better known in the U.S. owing to both our continued use of capital punishment, which has been abolished in a majority of contemporary countries, and to a longstanding tradition of making the specifics of the last meal public record. While the last meal may trace its contemporary roots to the Christian Last Supper, archaeology shows us that the last meals of victims of sacrifice and murder can be recovered from ancient remains.
Preserved human remains are found around the world, but particularly in areas that are cold and dry like Andean or Alpine mountaintops or hot and dry like African deserts. These environmental conditions freeze and/or desiccate the body, preserving soft tissue and organs along with the skeleton. Another method of preservation is in a peat bog, found throughout Northern Europe. The cold, acidic water and oxygen-free environment of the bog naturally turn skin and organs into leather while dissolving the bones. These mummies and bog bodies have been investigated by archaeologists over the years to reveal the last foods - and drugs - that were consumed prior to violent death.
The first recorded discovery of a preserved human body in a peat bog was in 1640 in Germany. As peat moss occurs naturally in many wetland environments and can be burned as fuel, people have been harvesting bogs for centuries -- but they have also been tossing bodies in them. The oldest bog body with preserved flesh dates back to about 2000 BC, but the majority of bog bodies date to the Iron Age of Europe, or about the 8th to 1st centuries BC.
Many of the bog bodies from northern Europe were found to have been murdered -- beheaded, stabbed, strangled, bludgeoned, or hanged. Evidence of torture has also been found - such as on Old Croghan Man, whose nipples were cut - but others may have been ritual sacrifices from the upper class. Given the fantastic preservation of internal organs in many of the bog bodies, archaeologists have learned quite a bit about the last foods consumed.
Among the bog bodies are both men and women, as well as adolescents. Huldremose Woman, found in Denmark and dating to the late Iron Age, had a rope around her neck and lacerations on her feet. A dietary analysis of her stomach contents by archaeologist Heather Gill-Robinson in 1999 revealed she ate a rye-based porridge before her untimely death. Zweeloo Woman, dating well into the Roman period in the Netherlands, had an inherited condition that made her forearms and lower legs shorter than average. According to studies in the early 1990s of her gut contents, Zweeloo woman also ate a porridge, but one made chiefly from millet along with a large amount of blackberries.
Among the men, Lindow Man was eating charred bread in early Roman England, and Husbäke Man ate fish in Roman-era Germany prior to his death. A few centuries earlier in time, however, Tollund Man and Grauballe Man, both from Denmark, revealed a porridge-based last meal made from cereals, vegetables, and herbs prior to their deaths. Tollund Man was hanged, the rope around his neck preserved, and Grauballe Man's throat was slit. The consumption of porridge suggests that Tollund and Grauballe Man, as well as Huldremose and Zweeloo Woman, were not well-fed and may have been given the bare minimum sustenance prior to their being killed.
Interestingly, though, for both Tollund and Grauballe Man it has been suggested that the rye or barley that formed the basis of the porridge they ate contained evidence of ergot, a fungus that occurs naturally. When consumed by humans in sufficient quantities, ergot can cause hallucinations, muscle spasms, and fever, as it contains lysergic acid, which is necessary for the synthesis of the drug LSD. Ergotism or ergot poisoning was first recorded historically in an Assyrian tablet dating to the 6th century BC, but it is unclear if its hallucinogenic properties were known to Iron Age Europeans.
While the question of whether European bog bodies reveal evidence of purposeful drugging prior to death is still open, on the other side of the world, there is much clearer data on escalating consumption of coca and alcohol before sacrificial children died in the high Andes.
The preserved bodies of three children were found on top of Mt. Llullaillaco on the border of Chile and Argentina in 1999. Dating to about 1500 AD, the children appear to have been left on the mountain in an Inca religious ritual called capacocha. These kids were often chosen from elite or noble families around the Inca Empire, taken to the capital of Cusco for the first stage of the ritual, and then to high mountaintops and left to watch over the homeland and become ancestors.
Two girls - half-sisters about 13 and 6 years old - were discovered, as well as an unrelated boy of about 7 years old. All were fantastically well preserved, from individual hairs to blood frozen in their hearts, as a result of their exposure to bitterly cold temperatures and dry air on the mountaintop of Llullaillaco.
Intensive analysis of the hair of the three children by archaeologist Timothy Taylor and colleagues in 2013 revealed a significant change in diet over the span of about a year. In particular, the hair of the 13-year-old girl, known as La Doncella or the Maiden of Llullaillaco, showed that she had started eating more high-status foods such as corn and meat about a year before her death, meaning she was likely chosen as a capacocha sacrifice around puberty.
But the researchers also looked for evidence of drugs in the children's systems, as chicha or maize beer was commonly drunk and chewing leaves from the coca plant has been a tradition among people of the Andes for centuries. A stimulant, coca helps prevent hunger and altitude sickness, and is a pain suppressant. Taylor and colleagues discovered that all of the children consumed both coca and alcohol in the year before they died.
The Maiden, though, took much more of both than did the young children. About six weeks before she died, her hair recorded an extremely high level of coca, the highest found to date in Andean mummies, as well as high amounts of alcohol. The combination of these two drugs was likely meant to sedate the Maiden and help her through her death and transition to an ancestor. She was found to still have coca leaves in her mouth, and was possibly chewing them right up until she died in her sleep from the frigid temperatures.
These two different kinds of preserved bodies -- from vastly different geographical areas, cultures, and times -- reveal both the last meals that these victims of sacrifice and murder consumed, but also the use of natural drugs to potentially ease those deaths. While these ancient people likely had no control over their last meals the way many prisoners in the U.S. today do, the details of their last days are poignant and offer us a window into their suffering and - in the case of the Andean children - the care put into ensuring as little discomfort as possible.