Mineral status of Sunghir 1 individual in general should be characterised as normal, well balanced, without any traces of age changes. Most of this man's diet undoubtedly consisted of terrestrial vertebrates' meat. Judging by trace elements concentrations, this man at least at the latest years of his life did not experience prolonged malnutrition or any problems with food assimilation.
Individ |
Zn |
Cu |
Sr |
Ñ-1 |
115 |
5 |
43 |
C-2 |
81 |
130 |
66 |
C-3 |
102 |
5 |
52 |
C-4 |
89 |
1 |
37 |
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Mineralisation of bone tissue of Sunghir 2 (the boy) is high, which testifies to considerable postmortem changes of tissue composition. These changes occurred, in the first place, in organic part of the bone, that is why the data on the concentrations of trace elements should be regarded with a certain degree of caution, and to estimate mineral status in general is not at all possible. The values of elements - nutritional indicators show that the diet of this particular person was probably very different from that one of the male from burial 1. The analysis of trace elements concentrations helps to reconstruct an unexpected combination of lower proportion of meat, large proportion of plants and a very high proportion of invertebrates in this adolescent's diet. Moreover, a low concentration of zinc in the skeleton gives good reason to suggest a clear quantitative insufficiency of animal protein food. It is also worth noting that this person's teeth are marked with multiple enamel hypoplasia, which may serve as an evidence of several stresses, experienced in childhood. Those stresses could have been possibly connected with malnutrition, or food assimilation problems.
High mineralisation of Sunghir 3 (the girl) hardly allows giving a general characteristic of lifetime mineral status. Very high calcium concentrations give some reasons to suggest that the process of bone tissue mineralisation slightly deviated from normal. Concentrations of the elements - diet indicators are generally close to those determined for the male S1. However, the decrease in zinc concentration and the increase in strontium may be connected with some changes in the diet structure in terms of increase in vegetable food. Judging by the zinc level, the nutrition was not sufficient.
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