by Kaye George
Do you suppose
that’s what Neanderthals ate? The Paleo diet does contain lots of protein, but
it also includes fresh fruits and vegetables. Neanderthals lived through some
extreme cold times and wouldn’t have had ready access to fresh plants year
round. The Paleo diet, though, is supposed to be what early Homo sapiens, the
hunter gatherers ate. Neanderthals weren’t hunter gatherers! Here’s what I
found out when I wrote DEATH IN THE TIME OF ICE.
(This article
uses the alternate spelling of Neandertal—not a typo.)
Chapter 17
Question: How
do we know what the Neanderthals ate?
Answer: An
analysis of the chemicals laid down in Neanderthals' teeth indicates that they
ate lots of meat. In fact they were more carnivorous than wolves!
Michael Richards,
now at the University of Bradford in England, and his colleagues
recently examined
isotopes of carbon (13C) and nitrogen (15N) in 29,000-year-old
Neandertal bones
from Vindija cave in Croatia. The relative proportions of these
isotopes in the
protein part of human bone, known as collagen, directly reflect their
proportions in
the protein of the individual’s diet. Thus, by comparing the isotopic
“signatures” of
the Neandertal bones to those of other animals living in the same
environments, the
authors were able to determine whether the Neandertals were
deriving the bulk
of their protein from plants or from animals.
The analyses show that the Vindija Neandertals had 15N levels comparable to
those seen in
northern carnivores such as foxes and wolves, indicating that they
obtained almost
all their dietary protein from animal foods. Earlier work hinted that
inefficient
foraging might have been a factor in the subsequent demise of the
Neandertals. But
Richards and his collaborators argue that in order to consume as
much animal food
as they apparently did, the Neandertals had to have been skilled
hunters.
Scientific
American, Special Edition: New Look at Human Evolution, August, 2003, p. 69
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