Neanderthhal culinary skills more sophisticated than we thought
Gregoire Cirade / Science Photo Library
Neanderthals processed animal bones to get fat from them 125,000 years ago, almost 100,000 years before modern people known to be the same.
The evidence comes from a unique line of lineeside in Neumark-Nord in eastern Germany, where more than 100,000 pieces of bones from at least 172 individual animals are found. The remains include horses, bids, deer, foxes, big cats and a faded two horned rhinoceros.
The bones have clear signs that hit small pieces and heated to liberate grease from spongy tissue inside them. This fat gives a non-decay, easy to carry, high calorie foods which can be very appreciated by hunter groups.
Wil roebroeks In Leiden University in the Netherlands and colleagues, studying the study, describing location as a “fat factory” as if used in a short time. “The piece of bones is clearly antshopogenic, not the result of carnivores or geological processes,” he said.
While there is no direct evidence that neanderthals are responsible for butchery, they are only known as European people at that time, as Roebroeks.
Previously, the oldest site where the Rendering was confirmed in Portugal 28,000 years ago.
Breaking the bones of big mammals such a lot of small fragments is energy labor and waste of time. “It just means if the breakdown serves a purpose,” Roebroeks said.
Although team does not have direct boiling evidence, clearly the bones are heated. “Judging from the presence of clearly heated bones, custom artifacts and rocks, burned by site fires,” he said.
The earliest known pottery Dates from about 20,000 years ago, so Neanderthals should use other types of vessels to boil bones. New experiments appear that the vessels made from decay materials such as the skin of one or a birch leather, placed directly in a fire, with the ability to heat water, as roebroeks.
“This is another addition to the culture repertoire of distant cousins and lowers the likelihood of these hunters searching for some forms of food storage,” he said.
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