While a 2019 study put forth evidence that he’d had advanced osteoarthritis in his hip and spine at the time of his death, the new research shows that in fact he was suffering from a disease passed on to him from an animal, likely while he was either cooking or butchering raw meat.
More recent, 5,000-year-old human skeletons have also shown evidence of the disease, but the Old Man of La Chapelle represents, for now, the oldest known case of it