Recent discoveries are challenging the conventional wisdom of what the Neanderthal eating habits consisted of. It turns out that some Neanderthals really cooked vegetables for consumption, instead of eating primarily meat as was previously held. Life for early humans is still largely mysterious, and eating habits is a fantastic insight into what daily life was like. In a time when you weren’t able to sign up for a pay day loan and go out to dinner, there were only so many options for food.
Being like a Neanderthal with more vegetables
USA Today accounts the Neanderthal eating habits was much more advanced than at first believed. The Neanderthal remains in Belgium and within the Shanidar Cave in Iraq were analyzed more closely. Vegetable was stuck in the teeth of some. The leftovers were from cooked vegetables like legumes (beans, lentils, etc), date palms and grass seeds. Before civilization came about, wheat grass shots were already used. The study by Amanda Henry, Alison Brooks and Dolores Piperno is being published through the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The idea the Neanderthal mostly ate meat is being questioned here. That would make for much more advanced Neanderthals and others before man came about.
Great times taking place for paleoanthropologists
There have been a lot of discoveries taking place with paleoanthropology lately which is the study of ancient man. A set of teeth was found within the Qesem Cave which is a site in Israel. The teeth found at Qesem may date to 400,000 years ago, which is nearly twice as old as the oldest remains of homo sapiens. So far, it is unclear if the remains were form homo sapiens or homo sapiens sapiens.
Evolutionary time period of Neanderthals
There was a very different world that early man and Neanderthals lived in. It is expected that Neanderthals don’t come from the same lineal ancestor that humans are from and are much more like a cousin. They are also called Homo Neanderthalensis. Discoveries for instance these help us to understand better where our species came from and what life was like for those who preceded us.
Articles cited
USA Today
content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2010/12/study-finds-that-neanderthals-cooked-and-ate-their-vegetables/1
PNAS
pnas.org/content/early/2010/12/17/1016868108.abstract
No comments:
Post a Comment