Neanderthals cooked and ate vegetables alongside meat , according to a new analysis of fossilized teeth from northern Europe and Iraq by the Department of Anthropology at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. Specifically, the researchers discovered remains of starch grains from numerous plants, including certain types of grasses, legumes, roots and tubers, in the teeth. The samples suggest that the food had been previously cooked , which is why these hominids dominated the kitchen like our closest ancestors. Of course, at the moment everything indicates that the Neanderthals did not practice agriculture.
As the authors conclude, "Neanderthal man devoted time and effort to making food more edible and strengthening its nutritional value ." "He was sophisticated in his way of collecting and preparing his food, whether to hunt large animals, or to collect and prepare his food based on plants," add the anthropologists, who collected tartar samples from seven fossilized teeth, three of which they came from the Iraqi archaeological site of Shanidar 3 and four from the Spy 1 and Spy 2 caverns in Belgium.
The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ( PNAS ), questions the theory commonly accepted until now that the almost exclusive intake of meat contributed to the disappearance of Neanderthals 30,000 years ago.
