Cook like a Neanderthal: scientists try to replicate ancient butchering methods to learn how Neanderthals ate birds

A pilot study indicates that fire-roasted birds are easier to process, but only birds butchered raw show cutmarks — evidence that we can use to understand Neanderthal diets.

The gold earring found by the scientists, photographed against a dark background, in front of the jar it was found in. Photograph by Marco Ansaloni.

Humanities

17 May 2024

A devastating fire 2,200 years ago preserved a moment of life and war in Iron Age Spain — right down to a single gold earring

A violent blaze, possibly linked to the Carthaginian army crossing the Pyrenees to fight the Romans, flared up so quickly people couldn’t save their animals or their valuables

Seeing the wood for the trees: how archaeologists use hazelnuts to reconstruct ancient woodlands

Archaeologists analyze the carbon isotope values of hazelnuts from ancient sites to see what the local woods were like.

Proof that Neanderthals ate crabs is another ‘nail in the coffin’ for primitive cave dweller stereotypes

by Angharad Brewer Gillham, Frontiers science writer Image: Tomasz Ochocki/Shutterstock.com Scientists studying archaeological remains at Gruta da Figueira Brava, Portugal, discovered that Neanderthals were harvesting shellfish to eat – including brown crabs, where they preferred larger specimens and cooked them in fires. Archeologists say this disproves the idea that eating marine foods gave early modern humans’ brains the competitive advantage. In a cave just south of Lisbon, archeological deposits conceal a Paleolithic dinner menu. As well as stone tools and charcoal, the site of Gruta de Figueira Brava contains rich deposits of shells and bones with much to tell us about the Neanderthals that lived there – especially about their meals. A study published in Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology shows that 90,000 years ago, these Neanderthals were cooking and eating crabs. “At the end of the Last Interglacial, Neanderthals regularly harvested large brown crabs,” said Dr Mariana Nabais of the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution (IPHES-CERCA), lead author of the study. “They were taking them in pools of the nearby rocky coast, targeting adult animals with an average carapace width of 16cm. The animals were brought whole to the cave, where they were roasted on coals and […]