About 1,000 years ago, Mesoamerican hunter-gatherers wrapped a young man's body in a bundle, first with a cotton cloth, then with a maguey mat, a thick cloth woven from agave fibers. The body was then placed in a cave in Zimapan, Mexico, where it waited for about a millennium.
But the body, commonly called Zimapan Man, was not alone in the cave. Instead, it was accompanied by the bacteria that inhabited it—the microbiome preserved in the human stomach and intestines.
According to a new article published today in PLOS OneSequencing the man's intestinal tissue and feces revealed bacteria that inhabited the bodies of young Mesoamericans about 1,000 years ago, centuries before Spanish colonization.
Read more: Solving the cold case of the murder of a 1000-year-old mummy
Analysis of the microbiomes of our ancient ancestors
There are trillions of bacteria living in our stomach and intestinal system along with other microorganisms. But the specific bacteria that live inside our bodies differ from person to person depending on our age, our diet and our location, among other factors. Thus, analyzing the bacteria that settled inside our ancient ancestors could provide important information about their lives.
Previously published studies have sequenced ancient microbiomes, including the microbiome from Inca individual from the Andes about 1000 years ago. Seeking to complement this research, Santiago Rosas-Plaza, a genomicist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and his colleagues studied the mummified body of a Zimapan man, who was likely a forager of the Otopame culture, one of the oldest civilizations in all of Mesoamerica.
Discovered in a cave with dry and cool conditions, the Zimapan man's body was well preserved with internal tissues intact, providing a valuable opportunity to assess his microbiome as it was at the time of death.
Read more: Why do the world's oldest mummies deteriorate and who created them?
Mesoamerican microorganisms
Using 16S rRNA gene sequencing to test intestinal tissue and feces that had been mummified, the team discovered several types of bacteria, including types that are still found in the human microbiome.
A) Map of Mexico, on which the state of Hidalgo and the area of Zimapan, where the person was discovered, are marked in red. Brown and green shading indicate the regions of Aridoamerica (brown) and Mesoamerica (green). B) Funeral bundle and human remains from Zimapan. B) Paleofecal samples from a Zimapan specimen.
(Image credit: Rosas-Plaza et al., 2025, PLOS One, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/))
In fact, bacteria from Peptostreptococcal, EnterobacteriaceaeAnd Enterococcal families were present in the mummy's intestines and feces, as were bacteria from Clostridium The family, which also appeared in the Inca gut, was sequenced in the 1990s. Meanwhile, Rhombucia male The bacteria were also found in the human gut from Zimapan, marking their first appearance in any ancient microbiome.
While some of these bacteria are associated with the digestion of plant tissue, others are associated with the breakdown of insect tissue, suggesting that humans consumed both plants and insects, with the former possibly including agave, yucca, and occasionally prickly pear.
According to the team, this analysis expands our understanding of Zimapan humans and ancient microbiomes more broadly. Indeed, little is known about the man, who died aged 20 or 30, other than what is known about his burial, suggesting that he occupied a prominent position in Otopame society.
“The remains of the Zimapan man were carefully wrapped like a package, which can be interpreted as indicating that he was an important figure in the community,” Rosas-Plaza and his colleagues said in their report. press release. “By studying the mathematical structure of the knots inside the fabric, we came to the conclusion that this is a unique and complex design.”
Additional analysis may reveal more surprises in the Zimapan man's microbiome and confirm the results of the current study. But the results still represent an important step in understanding the lives of ancient Mesoamericans and the ancient bacteria that inhabited them.
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