The general public still considers Neanderthals to be meat eaters. They say that is why they died out about 25 thousand years ago: they had nothing to eat, while the omnivorous sapiens were able to survive. However, evidence continues to emerge that Neanderthals knew a lot about other types of tasty and healthy food.
This time it turned out, for example, that our brothers subjected the plants to heat treatment and, perhaps, even used them for medicinal purposes.
Karen Hardy from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (Spain) and her colleagues analyzed the calcified plaque of five Neanderthals who lived about 50 thousand years ago in the El Sidron cave in northern Spain. In Stephen Buckley's laboratory at the University of York, UK, ten teeth were subjected to gas chromatography and mass spectrometry.
The plaque contained a number of carbohydrates and starch particles, meaning that the Neanderthals consumed different types of plants. But lipids and meat proteins were scarce.
In the teeth of some individuals, the researchers also found a range of alkyl phenols, aromatic hydrocarbons, and fried starch particles. Did the Neanderthals really cook stews?
But the most interesting thing is that among the compounds found in plaque, there are substances contained in chamomile and yarrow, which have a bitter taste and cannot boast of nutritional value. If, as recent genetic analysis has shown, Neanderthals could distinguish bitterness, then why did they eat such plants?
Commentators were divided on this score. Michael Hazan of the University of Toronto (Canada) believes that bitter herbs were used to start fires and their characteristic compounds got into food by accident - along with smoke. By contrast, Richard Wrangham of Harvard University (USA) believes that yarrow and chamomile served as a condiment.
Ms Hardy disagrees with both, stressing in particular: "There is no evidence that Neanderthals had salad bowls." In her opinion, the Neanderthals could use bitter plants as medicines: modern herbalists know that they have anti-inflammatory and antiseptic effects. “All modern great primates use medicinal plants,” the specialist recalls. There is no reason to believe that the Neanderthals were left out of this trend.
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Why then did they become extinct?
