Even Neanderthals had separate preferences with regard to dinner, the study suggests | Neanderthal
Nothing reveals heat in a kitchen as well as debating the best way to cut an onion. Now, the researchers have found that even our prehistoric cousins had separate preferences with regard to the preparation of food.
Archaeologists studying bones of animals recovered from two caves from northern Israel have found different groups of Neanderthals, living almost at the same time, massacred the same animals in different ways.
“This means that in the entire Neanderthal population, you have several distinct groups which have distinct means of doing, even for activities which are so linked to survival,” said Anaël Jallon, of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the first author of research.
Writing in the frontiers in Environmental Archaeology Journal, Jallon and his colleagues report how they studied the cutting marks on 249 fragments of bone between 70,000 and 50,000 years of the AMUD cave, and 95 bone fragments dating between 60,000 and 50,000 years of Kebara Cave.
The caves are about 70 km and were occupied by Neanderthals during the winter. The two groups are known to have used similar flint tools.
The analysis by the team of fragments, which were recovered in the caves in the 1990s, confirmed the previous results which burned and fragmented the samples in the Cave of Amud, and that the two groups had a similar diet with animals such as mountain gazelles and fallow deer.
He also provided new ideas, including the bones of the biggest animals, like the Aurochs, were more commonly found in the Kebara cave. However, Jallon noted that it could be that Kebara’s samples were easier to identify, or that the Neanderthals of Amud could have massacred such animals elsewhere.
The researchers carried out a detailed analysis of the cutting marks on 43 and 34 bone samples from the AMUD and Kebara caves respectively, finding a certain number of differences between the two.
Part of the variation linked to the type of animal or part of the body, being massacred, but these factors did not explain all the differences, they found.
“Even when we only compare the gazelles, and only the long bones of the gazelles, we find a higher density of cutting brands in [bones from] Amud, with more coupled brands that meet, [and] Fewer cut marks that are straight lines, but more [curved]”Said Jallon.
The team suggests a certain number of possible explanations, including different groups of Neanderthals had different butcher’s techniques, involved a different number of individuals during the butcher’s shop or massacred meat in different decomposition states.
“It is either, like, food preferences that lead in different ways to prepare the meat, then cut it, just differences in the way they learn to cut meat,” said Jallon.
Dr. Matt Pope, from the University College of London, which was not involved in work, said that the study added to research showing different groups of Neanderthals had different ways of making tools and sometimes used different tools of tools.
“These are not only cutting marks under study, these are the gestures and movements of the Neanderthals themselves, as evocative for us as imprints or brands of hand on a wall of caves,” he said.
“Future research will help discern between the alternative [explanations for the variations]But the study as it is able is a powerful reminder that there is no Neanderthal monolithic culture and that the population contained several groups at different times and places, living in the same landscape, with perhaps very different lifestyles. “”
