Scientists have upgraded their opinion of Neanderthal cuisine after spotting traces of cooked food on the fossilized teeth of our long-extinct cousins.
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.
Dolores Piperno, who led the study at the archeobiology 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 said.
The new findings bring fresh evidence to the long debate over why Neanderthals and not our direct ancestors, the early modern humans, went extinct.
The last of the Neanderthals are thought to have died out about 28,000 years ago, but it is unclear what role — if any — modern humans played in their demise.
“The whole question of why Neanderthals went extinct has been controversial for a long time and dietary issues play a significant part in that,” Piperno said. “Some scholars claim the Neanderthals were specialized 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 about 36,000 years ago.
The scientists examined three teeth from the Iraqi Neanderthal and two from each of the Belgian specimens. To look for traces of food on them, they scraped fossilized plaque from each tooth and looked at it under a microscope.
Grains from plants are tiny, but have distinct shapes that the scientists identified by comparing them to 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 gelatinized 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 organized themselves in a similar way to early hunter-gatherer groups.
“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,” she said. “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 labor in the Neanderthals and that is something most people did not think existed.”
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese