Scientists have analyzed the oldest charred food remains ever found, providing the first evidence of plant cooking among Neanderthals.
Ancient hunter-gatherers They were thought to have a largely meat-based diet, but researchers have found that prehistoric peoples had a diverse diet in which plants figured heavily.
The researchers used a scanning electron microscope to analyze nine charred ancient food samples from two sites: Shanidar Cavea Neanderthal and the first modern human habitations about 800 km north of Baghdad in Iraq and Franchthi Cave in Greece.
Five food fragments recovered from Shanidar are the ‘earliest’ of their kind found in Southwest Asia, dating back 40,000 and 70,000 years, according to University of Liverpool postdoctoral researcher Ceren Kabukcu, who led the study. published in the journal Antiquity. .
The charred pieces of prepared plant foods include a mixture of different seeds, wild legumes, wild mustard, wild nuts and wild herbs – which may have formed the diet of Neanderthals.
“They look like charred crumbs or fragments of what could be patties, thick porridge,” Dr Kabukcu told Sky News.
The four remains recovered from Franchthi are the first of their kind recovered in Europe, from hunter-gatherer occupation around 13,000 to 12,000 years ago, she added.
One of the food deposits turned out to be “bread-like”.
Culinary tips
The team was also able to identify cooking tricks used by Neanderthals and early modern human chefs to make food taste better.
Pulses, the most commonly identified ingredient, have a naturally bitter taste, which chefs in Stone Age repressed by soaking, leaching then pounding or grinding.
Pounding or grinding food would also make it easier for the body to absorb nutrients, while providing more cooking options.
Food fragments found in Shanidar Caves. Photo: Graeme Barker/University of Cambridge
According to the researchers, the bread-like meal found in Franchthi Cave was prepared by grinding seeds into ultra-fine flour, showing that hunter-gatherers developed specialized culinary practices in the Middle and Upper Paleolithic, ages ago. tens of thousands of years.
“Our work conclusively demonstrates the deep antiquity of plant foods involving more than one ingredient and processed with multiple stages of preparation,” Dr Kabukcu said.
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In modern agriculture, bitter compounds are almost entirely eliminated, but neither Neanderthals nor early modern human chefs have been found to remove all of the seed coat, retaining the natural bitter taste of some legumes in their meals.
The results suggest that “plants with strong flavors, some bitter, some pungent, some rich in tannins were important ingredients (or seasonings) in Paleolithic hunter-gatherer cuisine,” Dr Kabukcu told Sky News, adding that ‘”There were very old and sophisticated herbal traditions that relied on those herbal flavors” from a very ancient time.
