In his unique work, Václav Smrcka gives an account of his research of trace elements in fossil anthropological findings which enables him to reconstruct the history and changes in the human diet in the last 7000 years. The results of the author's research are compared to historical literary sources from the antiquity onwards. Smrcka based his research on the content of zinc, stroncium, lead and tin in bone tissue. His conclusions concern, among other things, the epochal changes of the human environment and the influence of trace elements on human growth.
