BBC News Science & Environment
27 December 2010 Last updated at 20:44 GMT
Neanderthals cooked and ate vegetables
Pallab Ghosh By Pallab Ghosh Science correspondent, BBC News
NEANDERTHAL Hunter, gatherer, vegetarian masterchef?
Neanderthals cooked and ate plants and vegetables, a new study of Neanderthal
remains reveals.
Researchers in the US have found grains of cooked plant material in their teeth.
The study is the first to confirm that the Neanderthal diet was not confined to
meat and was more sophisticated than previously thought.
The research has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences.
The popular image of Neanderthals as great meat eaters is one that has up until
now been backed by some circumstantial evidence. Chemical analysis of their
bones suggested they ate little or no vegetables.
This perceived reliance on meat had been put forward by some as one of the
reasons these humans become extinct as large animals such as mammoths declined
due to an Ice Age.
But a new analysis of Neanderthal remains from across the world has found
direct evidence that contradicts the chemical studies. Researchers found
fossilised grains of vegetable material in their teeth and some of it was
cooked.
Although pollen grains have been found before on Neanderthal sites and some in
hearths, it is only now there is clear evidence that plant food was actually
eaten by these people.
Continue reading the main story
"Start Quote
We have found pollen grains in Neanderthal sites before but you never know
whether they were eating the plant or sleeping on them or what"
End Quote Professor Alison Brooks George Washington University
Professor Alison Brooks, from George Washington University, told BBC News: "We
have found pollen grains in Neanderthal sites before but you never know whether
they were eating the plant or sleeping on them or what.
"But here we have a case where a little bit of the plant is in the mouth so we
know that the Neanderthals were consuming the food."
More like us
One question raised by the study is why the chemical studies on Neanderthal
bones have been wide of the mark. According to Professor Brooks, the tests were
measuring proteins levels, which the researchers assumed came from meat.
"We've tended to assume that if you have a very high value for protein in the
diet that must come from meat. But... it's possible that some of the protein in
their diet was coming from plants," she said.
This study is the latest to suggest that, far from being brutish savages,
Neanderthals were more like us than we previously thought.
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