Researchers at the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Paleoenvironment, in Tübingen (Germany), have just released the results of an investigation that details the diet of Neanderthals , a human species extinct about 28,000 years ago.
Specifically, experts have examined the remains of two caves in Belgium, where the skeletal remains of Neanderthal individuals and numerous animals , with an age of between 45,000 and 40,000 years, coincided: mammoths, woolly rhinos, European bison, reindeer, horses, wolves , bears, lions and cave hyenas.
The analysis of the stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes of collagen – a protein present, above all, in our skin and bones – has determined that, despite having the same type of prey as the rest of the predators, Homo neanderthalensis preferred the meat from mammoths and woolly rhinos . In fact, they made up about 80% of their diet. The other carnivores in the area, on the other hand, killed “small game” such as bison, horses and reindeer.
The study also confirms that 20% of the remaining diet was enriched with vegetables , an issue that remained under discussion among the scientific community. It is now known what the percentage of fruit and vegetables was in their intake, although it does not provide significant clues about the causes of their extinction.
This work yields conclusions similar to others made with prehistoric remains of Homo sapiens . For example, modern humans who inhabited a cave in the Czech Republic 30,000 years ago also had a fondness for mammoths, while they threw reindeer meat – that is, what they did not use – to their dogs . Perhaps the cause was that the reindeer did not provide them with enough fat, essential for subsistence and keeping the brain active when food was not abundant.
