Recent analysis of some the earliest food remains of Neanderthals indicates that early humans used different ingredients to prepare and flavor their meals.
According to a new study published in the journal Antiquity, “plant material found at the Shanidar Cave in northern Iraq and Franchthi Cave in Greece revealed prehistoric cooking by Neanderthals and early modern humans was complex.”
At Shanidar Cave, Katie Hunt notes, “the researchers studied plant remains from 70,000 years ago, when the space was inhabited by Neanderthals, an extinct species of human, and 40,000 years ago, when it was home to early modern humans (Homo sapiens).”
Dr. Ceren Kabukcu, an archaeobotanical scientist at the University of Liverpool and the lead author of the study said that distance in time and space notwithstanding, “similar plants and cooking techniques were identified at both sites — possibly suggesting a shared culinary tradition.”
On the other hand, John McNabb, a professor at the Centre for the Archaeology of Human Origins at the University of Southampton, argues that scientific understanding of the Neanderthal diet has changed significantly “as we move away from the idea of them just consuming huge quantities of hunted game meat.”
He says: “More data is needed from Shanidar, but if these results are supported then Neanderthals were eating pulses and some species from the grass family that required careful preparation before consumption. Sophisticated techniques of food preparation had a much deeper history than previously thought.”
According to Hunt, “such creative cooking techniques were once thought to have emerged only with the shift from the hunter-gatherer lifestyle to humans’ focus on agriculture — known as the Neolithic transition — that took place between 6,000 to 10,000 years ago.”