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NEANDERTHAL FOOD
Neanderthals had big teeth
Neanderthals ate meat, vegetables, berries, grains and nuts. It was long thought they were strict carnivores, based on bones of mammoth, reindeer and other animals, found at their campsites. But fairly recent studies of their teeth, DNA and even feces indicated their diet included a lot of foods that were not meat. Data suggests that during cold periods, Neanderthals, especially those living in open, grassland areas, subsisted mostly on meat. During warmer times in greener environments they supplement their diet with plants, seeds and nuts.
Based on remains found in Neanderthal caves, Neanderthals also consumed edible plants, shellfish, rabbits, tortoises, and small reptiles and rotting carcasses. But the lack of milling tools and other evidence found at Neanderthal sites indicates plants were a supplementary food “more like salads, snacks and deserts than energy-rich staple food” according to Mary Stone of the University of Arizona. Based on studies of the growth of tooth enamel, Erik Trinkaus of Washington University found that more than 70 percent of the Neanderthal fossils he studied showed one brush with starvation.
Zach Zorich wrote in Archaeology magazine: The bones of large herbivores found at Neanderthal sites across Europe and Asia seem to indicate that their meals consisted of one course: meat. Several new studies, however, reveal a wider variety of menu options, including salmon, fish, duck, rabbit, and possibly mushrooms. And when the meals were over, Neanderthals cleaned up with toothpicks that left grooves in their teeth found at Cova Foradà in Spain. But maybe not everything they ate accorded with modern tastes. Research published in 2012 shows that the tartar on Neanderthal teeth contains microfossils from a wide variety of plant foods and medicines (“Neanderthal Medicine Chest,” November-December 2012). But Laura Buck and Chris Stringer of London’s Natural History Museum suggest that Neanderthals may not have directly eaten these plants, but rather ate herbivores’ stomachs containing them. Before you make a face: “We know that many modern hunter-gatherers eat the stomach contents of their prey,” says Stringer. “The Inuit regarded this as a special treat.” [Source: Zach Zorich, Archaeology magazine, January-February 2014]
RELATED ARTICLE: NEANDERTHAL HUNTING, FISHING AND MEAT EATING factsanddetails.com
Neanderthal Diet Depended on Where They Lived
Neanderthals ate a varied diet that often depended on where they lived. Analysis of teeth of Spanish Neanderthals at El Sidron cave, dated to around 48,000 years ago, shows they ate pine nuts, mushrooms and moss, suggesting they were forest dwellers, while an analysis of teeth of Neanderthals in Spy cave in Belgium, dated to around 42,000 years ago, showed they regularly ate woolly rhinoceros and wild sheep, animals that lived in open grasslands. “Neanderthals, not surprisingly, are doing different things, exploiting different things, in different places,” Keith Dobney, a bioarchaeologist and co-author of the research from the University of Liverpool, told The Guardian.
Nicola Davis wrote in The Guardian:“Writing in the journal Nature, Dobney and an international team of colleagues describe how they analysed ancient DNA – from microbes and food debris – preserved in the dental tartar, or calculus, of three Neanderthals. Two of the individuals were from the El Sidrón cave in Spain while one was from the Spy Cave in Belgium.he results reveal that northern Neanderthals had a wide-ranging diet, with evidence of a mushroom known as grey shag in their tartar, together with traces of woolly rhinoceros and wild sheep. [Source: Nicola Davis, The Guardian, March 8, 2017]
cave lion and hyena bones found at Neanderthal Budapest Erd campsite
“By contrast Neanderthals from El Sidrón showed no evidence of meat eating – instead they appear to have survived on a mixture of forest moss, pine nuts and a mushroom known as split gill. The difference was further backed up by DNA-based analysis of the diversity and make-up of microbial communities that had lived in the Neanderthals’ mouths. The findings support previous studies suggesting that the Neanderthals of El Sidrón ate little meat, although Dobney cautioned against drawing broader conclusions, citing the small sample size of the latest study. “I hesitate to say that we have clear, definitive proof that Neanderthals in Spain were vegetarian,” he said. |=|
According to the Los Angeles Times: The Spanish Neanderthals, whether by necessity or by choice, may have been vegetarians. It's interesting that there were no squirrels or other small tree-dwelling animals in the plaque of the Neanderthals from Spain. Whether that was intentional or not remains to be seen, she said. Incidentally, studies show the vegetarian Neanderthals apparently met a nasty fate. Cut marks on their bones show they were probably eaten by other people.
In an article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Yoanda Fernandeze-Jalvo of the National Museum of Natural Science in Madrid and Christopher Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London wrote they found bones from monk seals and common and bottlenose dolphins along with Neanderthal tools in caves at a 30,000-year-old site on a beach in Gibralter. The finding indicates that only did Neanderthals collect shellfish and mollusks they also ate seals and dolphins although its not clear whether they hunted these creatures or just found them washed up on the beach. The presence of a large number of immature seals, however, suggests they may have been hunted while on shore during breeding season. .
Efforts to Figure Out What Neanderthals Ate
In a study in Belgium and Spain, described above, published in Nature on March 9, 2017, the scientists examined the DNA found in the dental plaque of the Neanderthals. “Dental plaque traps microorganisms that lived in the mouth and pathogens found in the respiratory and gastrointestinal tract, as well as bits of food stuck in the teeth – preserving the DNA for thousands of years,” says lead author Dr Laura Weyrich, a research fellow with Australian Centre for Ancient DNA (ACAD) and Dental School at the University of Adelaide. “Genetic analysis of that DNA ‘locked-up’ in plaque, represents a unique window into Neandertal lifestyle – revealing new details of what they ate, what their health was like and how the environment impacted their behaviour.” [Source: University of Adelaide and the Spanish National Research Council, March 9, 2017 **/ ]
According to MIT: While scientists have attempted to reconstruct the Neanderthal diet, much of the evidence has been inconclusive. For example, researchers have analyzed bone fragments for carbon and nitrogen isotopes — signs that Neanderthals may have consumed certain prey, such as pigs versus cows. But such isotopic data only differentiate between protein sources — underestimating plant intake, and thereby depicting the Neanderthal as exclusively carnivorous. Other researchers recently identified plant microfossils trapped in Neanderthal teeth — a finding that suggests the species may have led a more complex lifestyle, harvesting and cooking a variety of plants in addition to hunting prey. [Source: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, June 25, 2014 -]
wild horse bones from the Erd campsite
Ainara Sistiaga, a graduate student at the University of La Laguna, made the discoveries at El Salt Cave described below. According to to MIT: Sistiaga says it is possible that Neanderthals didn't eat plants directly, but consumed them through the stomach contents of their prey or “they used their teeth as tools, biting plants, among other things. We can't assume they were actually eating the plants based on finding microfossils in their teeth." “For a more direct approach, Sistiaga looked for fecal remains in El Salt. She and her colleagues dug out small samples of soil from different layers, and then worked with Summons to analyze the samples at MIT. In the lab, Sistiaga ground the soil into a powder, then used multiple solvents to extract any organic matter from the sediment. Next, she looked for certain biomarkers in the organic residue that would signal whether the fecal remains were of human origin. Specifically, Sistiaga looked for signs of coprostanol, a lipid formed when the gut metabolizes cholesterol. As humans are able to break down more cholesterol than any other mammal, Sistiaga looked for a certain peak level of coprostanol that would indicate the sample came from a human. -
“She and Summons then used the same geochemical techniques to determine the proportions of coprostanol — an animal-derived compound — to 5B-stigmastanol, a substance derived from the breakdown of phytosterol derived from plants. Each sample contained mostly coprostanol — evidence of a largely meat-based diet. However, two samples also held biomarkers of plants, which Sistiaga says may indicate a rather significant plant intake. As she explains it, gram for gram, there is more cholesterol in meat than there is phytosterol in plants — so it would take a significant plant intake to produce even a small amount of metabolized phytosterol.” -
Dietary Differences Between Modern Human and Neanderthals
Ewen Callaway wrote in NewScienceLife: “Chemical signatures locked into bone suggest the Neanderthals got the bulk of their protein from large game, such as mammoths, bison and reindeer. The anatomically modern humans that were living alongside them had more diverse tastes. As well as big game, they also had a liking for smaller mammals, fish and seafood. “It seems modern humans had a much broader diet, in terms of using fish or aquatic birds, which Neanderthals didn’t seem to do,” says Michael Richards, a biological anthropologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany and the University of British Columbia in Canada.” [Source: Ewen Callaway, NewScienceLife, August 12, 2009]
“Because our bones are constantly destroyed and rebuilt while we are alive, the atoms that make up collagen hold a record of what we’ve eaten. “When you take a sample of a bone you’re getting all those breakfasts, lunches and dinners for 20 years,” Richards says. Measurements of the abundance of heavy isotopes of carbon and nitrogen hold the key. Marine environments contain a higher proportion of heavy carbon atoms (carbon-13) than land ecosystems, so lots of carbon-13 in the recovered collagen points to a seafood diet. Meanwhile, heavy nitrogen (nitrogen-15) tends to build up as the atom moves up the food chain, from plants to herbivores to carnivores. **
“High levels of heavy nitrogen can also come from a diet with lots of freshwater fish. Aquatic food webs tend to contain more steps than terrestrial ecosystems, so large fish often have higher levels of heavy nitrogen than land predators. By comparing the relative levels of these isotopes with those of animals found nearby, researchers can sketch the broad outlines of an ancient diet, if not every last calorie. **
“Carbon and nitrogen isotopes suggest that Neanderthals living between 37,000 and 120,000 years ago in what are now France, Germany, Belgium and Croatia got the bulk of their protein from large land herbivores, Richards and Trinkaus conclude. Levels of heavy nitrogen in Neanderthal bones invariably exceed levels in surrounding herbivores, and tend to match levels in that period’s carnivores, such as hyenas. Some modern humans living between 27,000 and 40,000 years ago opted for more varied diets. High levels of carbon-13 in two samples from Italy and France are evidence for a diet that probably included some marine fish or seafood. **
mollusks and barnacles found in Neanderthal cave in Spain
Modern Humans and Neanderthals Had Different Dietary Strategies
According to Plos One: “When fluctuating climates in the Ice Age altered habitats, modern humans may have adapted their diets in a different way than Neandertals, according to a study published in PLOS ONE by Sireen El Zaatari of the University of Tübingen, Germany, and colleagues. [Source: Plos One press release, popular-archaeology.com, April 27, 2016 \^^/]
“The Neandertal lineage survived for hundreds of thousands of years despite the severe temperature fluctuations of the Ice Age. The reasons for their decline around 40 thousand years ago remain unclear. The authors of this study investigated the possible influence of dietary strategies using the fossilized molars of 52 Neandertals and Upper Paleolithic Homo sapiens (modern humans). They analysed the type and degree of microwear on the teeth to attempt to draw conclusions about diet type and to establish a relationship with prevalent climactic conditions. \^^/
“They found that as the climate fluctuated and habitats altered, Neandertals may have adapted their diet to the resources that were most readily available, eating mainly meat when in open, cold steppe environments, and supplementing their diet with more plants, seeds, and nuts when in forested landscapes. Meanwhile, modern humans seemed to stick to their dietary strategy regardless of slight environmental changes and retained a relatively large proportion of plant-based foods in their diet. “To be able to do this, they may have developed tools to extract dietary resources from their environment”” says Sireen El Zaatari. The researchers concluded that Upper Paleolithic modern humans’ differing dietary strategies may have given them an advantage over the Neandertals. \^^/
“The Neandertals may have maintained their opportunistic approach of eating whatever was available in their changing habitats over hundreds of thousands of years. However, modern humans seem to have invested more effort in accessing food resources and significantly changed their dietary strategies over a much shorter period of time, in conjunction with their development of tools, which may have given them an advantage over Neanderthals. \^^/
“The European Neandertal and modern human individuals analysed in this study do not temporally overlap and thus would not inform us about direct dietary competition between these two groups. Nevertheless, if the behavioral differences detected in this study were already established at the time of contact between them, these differences might have contributed to the demise of the Neandertals and the survival of modern humans.” \^^/
Neanderthals May Have Eaten the Contents of Other Animals’ Stomachs
New thinking put forward by two researchers at London's Natural History Museum suggests that evidence that Neanderthals consumed medicinal plant and self-medicated themselves may in fact be evidence that they ate the contents of animals' stomachs which are said to have “a consistency and a flavour that is not unlike cream cheese.” In a paper by Laura Buck and Chris Stringer and published in 2013 in Quaternary Science Reviews, Stringer argues that the tiny pieces of plant found in Neanderthal teeth could have come from a very different source. [Source: Robin McKie, The Guardian, October 20, 2013 |=|]
The pieces of plant may have become embedded in the stomach of deer, bison and other herbivores that had then been hunted and eaten by Neanderthals.“"Many hunter-gatherers, including the Inuit, Cree and Blackfeet, eat the stomach contents of animals such as deer because they are good source of vitamin C and trace elements," Stringer told The Guardian. "For example, among the Inuit, the stomach contents of an animal are considered a special delicacy with a consistency and a flavour that is not unlike cream cheese. At least that is what I am told." |=|
Robin McKie wrote in The Guardian: “The crucial point about the stomach contents of grazing animals is that they are filled with fragments of the plants that those herbivores had consumed shortly before they were stalked and killed. When those contents are then chewed and eaten, the tiny pieces of grass and herbs are transferred to their hunter's teeth and get embedded there. Then, when their devourers are themselves killed, or die of natural causes, shortly afterwards, those plant fragments are preserved in their teeth for later analysis by modern palaeontologists. "The mistake is to think that because you find plant fragments in teeth that they must have got there because these carnivores – in this case Neanderthals – had consumed them as part of a carefully constructed diet or were taken because it was realised that certain herbs and grasses had health-promoting properties," added Buck. "In fact, they may have got there purely because Neanderthals liked to eat the stomach contents of some of the animals they killed." |=|
“This point is backed by Stringer. "Neanderthals lived in Europe during many cold periods and it is interesting to note that many modern human hunter-gatherers who eat stomach contents today, such as the Inuit, also live in northerly regions. It is a behaviour often displayed by a cold-adapted species, in other words. And if you have gone to the time and trouble of hunting a large herbivore, you would not miss out on a nutritious part such as the stomach." |=|
“However, Stringer and Buck stress that they are not arguing that Neanderthals definitely did not eat vegetables or could not have used certain herbs as medicines. "What we are saying is that the evidence of plant fragments in Neanderthal teeth is simply not strong enough to prove that they did so. There are other explanations, including the proposal that they ate these organs of the animals they killed. They had the stomach for it, if you want to put it that way."” |=|
Teeth from Krapina, Croatia
Neanderthal Cooking
Zach Zorich wrote in Archaeology Magazine: Burned vegetable remains from Franchthi Cave in Greece and Shanidar Cave in northern Iraq are revealing that Middle and Upper Paleolithic hunter-gatherers cooked plants many thousands of years before the advent of agriculture. A team including archaeobotanist Ceren Kabukcu of the University of Liverpool found that people in the two caves used food preparation techniques that were remarkably similar, despite the 60,000 years separating them; Shanidar Cave was occupied by Neanderthals between 75,000 and 70,000 years ago, while Franchthi Cave was used from 11,700 to 11,400 years ago. [Source: Zach Zorich, Archaeology Magazine, May/June 2023]
The researchers employed reflected light and scanning electron microscopes to identify the species of carbonized plants. They found that the remains in both caves included oat and barley seeds as well as peas, pistachios, almonds, and wild mustard. Several of these plants would have had to be soaked in water and crushed to remove toxins before they could be eaten. In some cases, different plants were combined into a single dish. Many of the plants would have had a bitter taste, and wild mustard has a particularly sharp flavor. According to Kabukcu, these people weren’t just gathering foods with the most calories. “They go out and seek specific flavors and eat the things that they like,” she says.
Did Neanderthals Boil Their Food?
At a meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in Austin, Texas in April 2014, University of Michigan paleontologist John Speth said “I think it’s pretty likely the Neanderthals boiled.” Based on evidence from ancient bones, spears, and porridge, and a lack of any kind of pot, Speth believes speculates Neanderthals Neanderthals boiled using only a skin bag or a birch bark tray, relying on a trick of chemistry: that water will boil at a temperature below the ignition point of almost any container, even flammable bark or hides. “You can boil in just about anything as long as you take it off the flame pretty quickly,” Speth says. [Source: Dan Vergano, National Geographic, April 30, 2014 |~|]
Dan Vergano of National Geographic wrote: “While conceding that Neanderthals were handy with wood and fire, paleontologists such as Mary Stiner of the University of Arizona in Tucson want to let Speth’s idea simmer for a while before they swallow it. “Whether they went as far as boiling stuff in birch bark containers or in hides is harder to evaluate,” Stiner says. “I am not convinced.” |~|
“The use of fire by humans goes back more than 300,000 years in Europe, where evidence is seen in Neanderthal hearths. But most research has supported the idea that Stone Age boiling, which relied on heating stones in fire pits and dropping them into water, arrived on the scene too late for Neanderthals. Evidence of cracked “boiling stones” in caves used by early modern humans, for example, goes back only about 26,000 years, too recent for Neanderthals. And pottery for more conventional boiling appears to be only about 20,000 years old. |~|
“But who needs boiling stones or pots? Speth suggests that Neanderthals boiled foods in birch bark twisted into trays, a technology that prehistoric people used to boil maple syrup from tree sap. Archaeologists have demonstrated that Neanderthals relied on birch tar as an adhesive for hafting spear points as long as 200,000 years ago. Making birch tar requires clever cooking in an oxygen-free container, says paleontologist Michael Bisson of Canada’s McGill University. “I’ve burned myself trying to do it,” Bisson says, adding that Neanderthals were plenty clever when it came to manipulating birch. They likely ignited rolled-up birch bark “cigars” and plunged them into holes to cook the tar in an oxygen-free environment. f the tar is exposed to oxygen in the air as it cooks, “it explodes,” Bisson adds. |~|
“Supporting the boiling idea, Speth said that animal bones found in Neanderthal settings are 98 percent free of scavenger’s gnawing marks, which he says suggests the fat had been cooked off. And some grains found in the teeth of a Neanderthal buried in Iraq’s Shanidar Cave site appear to have been cooked, according to a 2011 Proceedings of the National Academies of Science report. “It is speculative, but I think it is pretty likely that they knew how to boil,” Speth says.
In a separate talk at the meeting, University of Michigan paleontologist Andrew White noted recent evidence that Neanderthal mothers weaned their children at an earlier age than human mothers typically do. He said the early transition from milk to food supports the theory that Neanderthals boiled their youngsters’ food to make it more digestible.
Artifacts from La Ferrassie in France
Were Neanderthals Largely Vegetarians?
Scientists revised their view that Neanderthals were primarily meat eaters after finding traces of cooked food seeds and legumes on the fossilised teeth of Neanderthals found in caves. Ian Sample wrote in The Guardian: “The researchers found remnants of date palms, seeds and legumes – which include peas and beans – on the teeth of three Neanderthals uncovered in caves in Iraq and Belgium. Among the scraps of food embedded in the plaque on the Neanderthals' teeth were particles of starch from barley and water lilies that showed tell-tale signs of having been cooked. The Ice Age leftovers are believed to be the first direct evidence that the Neanderthal diet included cooked plants as well as meat obtained by hunting wild animals. [Source: Ian Sample, The Guardian, December 27, 2010]
“Dolores Piperno, who led the study at the archaeobiology laboratory at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, said the work showed Neanderthals were more sophisticated diners than many academics gave them credit for. Piperno said the discoveries even raised the possibility that male and female Neanderthals had different roles in acquiring and preparing food. "The plants we found are all foods associated with early modern human diets, but we now know Neanderthals were exploiting those plants and cooking them, too. When you cook grains it increases their digestibility and nutritional value," she added. |=|
Piperno said: "The whole question of why Neanderthals went extinct has been controversial for a long time and dietary issues play a significant part in that. Some scholars claim the Neanderthals were specialised carnivores hunting large game and weren't able to exploit a diversity of plant foods. As far as we know, there has been until now no direct evidence that Neanderthals cooked their foods and very little evidence they were consuming plants routinely." |=|
“Piperno's team was given permission to study the remains of three Neanderthal skeletons. One was unearthed at the Shanidar cave in Iraq and lived 46,000 years ago. The other two were recovered from the Cave of Spy in Belgium, and date to around 36,000 years ago. The scientists examined three teeth from the Iraqi Neanderthal and two from each of the Belgium specimens. To look for traces of food on them, they scraped fossilised plaque from each tooth and looked at it under a microscope. The study is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal. ||=|
“Grains from plants are tiny, but have distinct shapes that the scientists identified by comparing them with a collection at the Smithsonian's herbarium. The researchers also cooked a range of plants to see how their appearance changed. They collected 73 starch grains from the Iraqi Neanderthal's teeth. Some of these belonged to barley or a close relative, and appeared to have been boiled in water. "The evidence for cooking is strong. The starch grains are gelatinised, and that can only come from heat associated with cooking," Piperno said. Similar tests on the Belgian Neanderthals' teeth revealed traces of cooked starch that probably came from parts of water lilies that store carbohydrates. Other cooked starch grains were traced back to sorghum, a kind of grass. |=|
“In Piperno's opinion, the research undermines one theory that suggests early modern humans drove the Neanderthals to extinction by having a more sophisticated and robust diet. The work also raises questions about whether Neanderthals organised themselves in a similar way to early hunter-gatherer groups, she said. "When you start routinely to exploit plants in your diet, you can arrange your settlements according to the season. In two months' time you want to be where the cereals are maturing, and later where the date palms are ready to pick. It sounds simplistic, but this is important in terms of your overall cognitive abilities. In early human groups, women typically collected plants and turned them into food while men hunted. To us, and it is just a suggestion, this brings up the possibility that there was some sexual division of labour in the Neanderthals and that is something most people did not think existed." |=|
Questions and Mutations Related to Neanderthal Plant-Eating
On studies that appear to show that Neanderthal didn’t eat many plants. Ewen Callaway wrote in NewScienceLife: Hervé Bocherens, a biological anthropologist at the University of Tübingen in Germany “cautions against drawing too many conclusions from 13 Neanderthal skeletons, all unearthed in northern Europe. Collagen doesn’t survive well in warmer climates, so researchers know less about the diet of Neanderthals in southern Europe and the Middle East, he says. “There is evidence from a number of southern European sites in Portugal, Gibraltar, Spain and Italy that Neanderthals did exploit marine resources at times and, I would say, probably to a significant extent,” says Chris Stringer, a palaeoanthropologist at the Natural History Museum in London. His team recently found cut marks on seal and dolphin bones in a Neanderthal cave in Gibraltar. Isotopes recovered from bone also ignore important sources of food that don’t contain much protein. “I’m sure they’re having vegetables,” says Richards. “But they’re not eating enough that it’s being measured.” [Source: Ewen Callaway, NewScienceLife, August 12, 2009]
“A new study of ancient DNA offers preliminary support for that conclusion. Neanderthals possessed a gene mutation that would have meant they couldn’t taste bitter chemicals found in many plants. There has been speculation that this mutation, which occurs in a taste receptor gene called TAS2R38, is beneficial to humans because it makes vitamin-packed vegetables more palatable. It probably arose in the common ancestor of modern humans and Neanderthals more than a million years ago. The gene encodes a receptor that detects a chemical called phenylthiocarbamide, which is closely related to compounds produced by broccoli, cabbage and Brussels sprouts. **
“If vegetables weren’t part of the Neanderthal diet, the species would probably have lost the non-tasting mutation, says Carles Lalueza-Fox, a geneticist at the Institute of Biological Evolution in Barcelona, Spain, whose team sequenced TAS2R38 in 39,000-year-old DNA from a Neanderthal femur recovered in the El Sidrón cave in north-west Spain. **
“This Neanderthal’s DNA tested positive for tasting and non-tasting versions of TAS2R38, suggesting he or she boasted copies of both alleles of the gene – and with it the ability to taste bitter foods. The presence of the non-tasting allele in this individual suggests it may have been beneficial to some Neanderthals. “It doesn’t mean they were eating Brussels sprouts or cabbage but it could be similar vegetables,” Lalueza-Fox says.” **
cave hyena feces
Oldest Human Poop Also Reveals Neanderthals Ate Veggies
The world’s oldest human fecal fossils, dated to 50,000 years ago, suggests that Neanderthals ate a lot of food that wasn’t meat — including berries, nuts, and vegetables — according to a study published in the journal PLOS ONE.Dan Vergano wrote in National Geographic: “The oldest poop samples turned up at the site of El Salt, a collection of ancient hearths in southern Spain. The researchers were originally investigating the fire pits for chemical traces of fats from cooked meats. Amid the search, they unexpectedly found some fossil feces, or coprolites, in a top hearth layer dated to 50,000 years ago. "I was quite surprised we found these samples in a place where they would eat," says MIT geoarchaeologist Ainara Sistiaga, who led the study. "We think they were deposited after they stopped using the fire pit." [Source: Dan Vergano, National Geographic, June 25, 2014 |]
“For clues to the Neanderthal diet, lab samples of the feces were pulverized and examined for spectroscopic identification of their chemistry. In particular, the researchers looked for compounds created when bacteria aid digestion of meat and vegetables. The results identified four fats associated with meat. But two cholesterol-related compounds that are an unambiguous fingerprint of plants also turned up. "They were eating a lot of meat," Sistiaga says. "But we believe they were omnivorous." Although the chemistry analysis cannot specify which plant foods Neanderthals were eating, pollen analysis suggests that berries, nuts, and tubers grew in the region when the archaic humans lived in Spain. Mammoth, reindeer, and red deer bones widely found at Neanderthal sites had led paleontologists to see them as dedicated meat eaters. But more recent studies that uncovered plant remains at Neanderthal sites, on their tools, and even in their dental plaque had hinted that they were not strict carnivores. |
“The present study is the first to provide direct chemical analysis that Neanderthals ate vegetables—the most interesting part of the study, says paleontologist Erik Trinkaus of Washington University in St. Louis, who was not part of the research. "Their results are confirming an idea that is still somewhat new in the field," says paleobiologist Amanda Henry of Germany's Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. But she cautions that more evidence showing that the fecal samples undoubtedly came from Neanderthals, and not from another omnivorous animal such as bears, would be reassuring. |
“Sisiaga's team argues that the digestive compounds found in their analysis are present in ratios found only in humans. But Henry says by email that their argument would be bolstered with a deeper analysis: "I think the paper would have been stronger if they had used an independent means of identifying the coprolite, perhaps looking for human DNA or proteins." The compounds tested for in the El Salt study are "very stable," Sistiaga says. "We are going to try a two-million-year-old sample from another site next."
Neanderthal Diet: 80 Percent Meat
Fossil analysis suggests Neanderthals ate a diet that was 80 percent meat. Brooks Hays of UPI wrote: “New isotopic analysis suggests prehistoric humans ate mostly meat. As detailed in a new study published in the journal Quaternary International, the Neanderthal diet consisted of 80 percent meat, 20 percent vegetables. [Source: Brooks Hays, UPI, March 19, 2016 \~/]
“Researchers in Germany measured isotope concentrations of collagen in Neanderthal fossils and compared them to the isotopic signatures of animal bones found nearby. In doing so, scientists were able to compare and contrast the diets of early humans and their mammalian neighbors, including mammoths, horses, reindeer, bison, hyenas, bears, lions and others.\~/
Lead researcher Herve Bocherens, a professor at the University of Tubingen’s Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment, said: “Previously, it was assumed that the Neanderthals utilized the same food sources as their animal neighbors. However, our results show that all predators occupy a very specific niche, preferring smaller prey as a rule, such as reindeer, wild horses or steppe bison, while the Neanderthals primarily specialized on the large plant-eaters such as mammoths and woolly rhinoceroses.” \~/
All of the Neanderthal and animal bones, dated between 45,000 and 40,000 years old, were collected from two excavation sites in Belgium. Researchers have long debated the precise diet of early humans, but the latest study is the first to nail down precise percentages. Bocherens and his colleagues are hopeful their research will shed light on the Neanderthals’ extinction some 40,000 years ago. “We are accumulating more and more evidence that diet was not a decisive factor in why the Neanderthals had to make room for modern humans,” he said. \~/
See Separate Article: NEANDERTHAL HUNTING, FISHING AND MEAT EATING factsanddetails.com
Siberian Neanderthals Ate Both Plants and Animals
Research published in 2021 in the Journal of Human Evolution shows that Siberian Neanderthals ate both plants and animals. An international research team led by Domingo Carlos Salazar at the University of Valencia documented the diet of a Neanderthal through a unique combination of stable isotope analysis of Neanderthal bones and dental stones and identification of plant micro-remnants in an individual. [Source: Asociacion RUVID, phys.org, Ancientfoods June 10, 2021]
Phys.org reported; A team of researchers took bone samples and dental calculus from Neanderthal remains dated to 60,000 to 50,000 years ago BP from the site of Chagyrskaya in the Altai Mountains in Southern Siberia, located just 100 kilometers from the Denisova Cave. Analyzes of the stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes from one mandible (Chagyrskaya 6) revealed that this individual had a relatively high trophic level compared to the local food web, indicating that it consumed a large amount of animal protein from hunting large and medium-sized game. Using optical microscopy, the researchers identified a diverse assemblage of microscopic particles from plants preserved in the dental calculus from the same individuals as well as from others from the site. These plant microremains indicate that the inhabitants of Chagyrskaya also consumed a number of different plants.
“Neanderthals were capable of having a diverse menu even in adverse climatic environments,” says Domingo C. Salazar García, “it was really surprising that these eastern Neanderthals had broadly similar subsistence patterns to those from Western Eurasia, showing the high adaptability of our cousins, and therefore suggesting that their dietary ecology was probably not a disadvantage when competing with anatomically modern humans.”
“These microremains provide some indication that even as Neanderthals expanded onto the vast and cold forest-steppe of Central Asia they retained patterns of plant use that could have been developed in Western Eurasia,” says Robert Power, researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
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Last updated April 2024