Neanderthals Ate Their Veggies 151
sciencehabit (1205606) writes Scientists excavating an archaeological site in southern Spain have finally gotten the real poop on Neanderthals, finding that the Caveman Diet for these quintessential carnivores included substantial helpings of vegetables. Using the oldest published samples of human fecal matter, archaeologists have found the first direct evidence that Neanderthals in Europe cooked and ate plants about 50,000 years ago.
That's not what my crossfit instructor told me! (Score:2)
Palo diet bro!!!!!!!
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Bros don't crossfit, hipsters do.
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Stupid knows no borders.
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Really? (Score:2)
Is that what the cool kids are saying now? "Mom, I'm going to go publish for a while, don't worry, I'll spray some Glade"
Footnote: A quick perusal of Amazon's self-published material indicates the likely answer is yes...
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Well the article does state 'The tests revealed that the poop “clearly” contained high proportions of cholesterol and coprostanol from eating meat'.
Add in that they are unwilling to do a percentage analysis says either there methods are not refined enough to do so or the results are not impressive enough to grab the headline.
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Or there's a bit of vegetarian agenda being pushed here (not for the first time with such research).
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As if it fucking matters.
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For many of the myths espoused on what the Paleo diet was see here [youtube.com].
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It turns our that most people get the Paleo diet wrong. The diets of these people would differ wildly depending on the land they occupied
Even more people get wrong the fact that the diet part of Paleo (it's more of a lifestyle, which includes exercise) isn't about eating like our paleolithic ancestors, (which would be impossible to do) but rather eating similar to them. The main portion of the diet includes unprocessed meat, vegetables and fruits, or as little processing as possible.
Oh, fermented foods are good as well.
Of course they did. Mango salsa too. (Score:2)
Seems strange. (Score:5, Funny)
Omnivores eating things that are edible? I thought extraordinary claims required extraordinary proof.
Re:Seems strange. (Score:5, Funny)
Omnivores eating things that are edible? I thought extraordinary claims required extraordinary proof.
In this case, extraordinary claims did require extraordinary poop.
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Every animal when faced with hunger, will try to eat anything that looks remotely edible to it. The belief that neanderthals wouldn't be eating vegetables regularly is ridiculous.
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In this case, extraordinary claims did require extraordinary poop.
Queue image of Jeff Goldblum, taking off his sunglasses, then saying "That is one big pile of shit."
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Omnivores eating things that are edible? I thought extraordinary claims required extraordinary proof.
Ohh, I hope it was gluten free.
Re:Seems strange. (Score:5, Informative)
There is a fairly noticeable change when agriculture hits the scene (suddenly all rice/millet/wheat/etc. all the time becomes a thing for the squalid underclass, minus any small livestock that can be raised on scraps); but there is nothing suggesting that hominids with alternatives ever went meat-only.
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They should have called them crapoliths. ;-)
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. . .except maybe inuit, since there isn't much to 'gather' on the ice. . .
They didn't really live on the ice. It was just a temporary place to use while hunting. While the Inupiat and Yupik (as well as other Inuit people) obtained (and many still do) most of their calories from hunting, they still gathered and preserved tubers, lichen, seaweed and berries. I don't think any Inuit cultivated crops, but some did practice animal husbandry.
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The thing with Neanderthals is that _direct_ evidence (c.f. article) from the isotopic composition of bone collagen indicates they obtained most of their _protein_ from meat. This doesn't mean they didn't eat veggies - low protein fruits, for example, would be more or less invisible isotopically. What the isotope data tells us is that they r
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Seems to me the important point here is that they COOKED and ate plants... indicating that uncooked plants were unsuitable food.
And as you say, poop only indicates what they ate this week. Maybe it's a seasonal crop. Maybe it indicates the hunting was poor. Maybe someone had dietary perversions.
And maybe it was why they died out -- being reduced to relying on unsuitable foods.
Ad hominem. (Score:2)
I have been calling certain sorts "Coprophage" for years. Not one has yet understood the term.
I was not popular in school
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No thanks... (Score:5, Funny)
One Sample (Score:3)
Re:One Sample (Score:4, Insightful)
Seems like it shoots down the idea that no Neanderthal ate cooked veggies.
One counterexample goes a long way toward rejecting a theory.
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If it was said that they were only carnivores and we found evidence of them eating vegetables, then that does refute the original hypothesis for the entire species.
Re:One Sample (Score:5, Insightful)
Finding veggies in stool is no big deal, wild cats poop out grass all the time, it doesn't make them true omnivores.
They found DIGESTED vegetable matter, that is the true find, and one that easily extrapolates across the entire species.
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it is reasonable to assume that they were ADAPTED to eating veggies
The other Homininae digest plant matter, so why should we think that Neaderthal did not eat any plant matter?
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It's romanticizing them, if you'd call picturing the Neanderthals as brutish carnivores romantic. In similar fashion Jean Auel popularized the theory of a cult based around worship of the cave bear, but it turned out those fossils simply turned out to be from bears who died during hibernation in caves where Homo sapiens neanderthal happened to have inhabited earlier/later.
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The other Homininae digest plant matter, so why should we think that Neaderthal did not eat any plant matter?
Because it's a good idea to think you might be wrong. It encourages you to think of ways to *prove* that you're wrong.
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Yeah? What about this? [yolasite.com]
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Wrong species (Score:2, Interesting)
Before people start claiming that this proves that our ancestors ate such-and-such... remember Neanderthals aren't ancestors of modern Homo Sapiens but a different evolutionary branch altogether.
Which isn't to say that their and our common ancestors must have eaten a substantially different diet. Also, apparently there was some cross-breeding between our various ancestral species.
So what was my point again? Never mind.
Re: Wrong species (Score:1)
Modern humans are a hybrid species: Sapiens, Neanderthal, Desovionian, and there are genetic hints of a fourth yet unidentified subspecies that has contributed to the modern genome.
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There are genetic hints of a fourth yet unidentified subspecies [kym-cdn.com]?
same species, different race (Score:2)
As discoveries accumlate it looks more and more like neadertal did most of same cultural things as homo double-sapiens: composite tools, fire, language, art, clothing, etc. The degree of culture may have been different.
It also appears neadertal had larger and more complex brains [blogspot.com] than double-sapiens.
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Species is much more subtle then no fertile interbreeding. Example, ring species where you have types a,b,c and a can breed with b, b can breed with c but a can not breed with c. There are examples (big cats I believe) where the off spring are fertile if a is male and b is female but infertile if b is male and a is female. Then there are the species that are fertile across species but aren't turned on by the other species or have different breeding seasons so don't breed.
Basically species are more of a spec
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So, the opposite of James T. Kirk then?
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Kirk is more like a male dog, tries to breed with everything including legs without caring about species or pretty much anything but getting his rocks off.
Not more violent... (Score:2)
Europeans are not any more violent if you know your history (or read today's newspapers). What might be different is that Europeans have been more *organized* and invented more *technology* and therefore have done a much better job carrying out the violent tendencies that exist in all humans.
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Don't forget sesame seeds...
Human fecal matter? (Score:2)
What does that tell us about Neanderthals?
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"The Neanderthals or Neandertals [...] are an extinct species of human in the genus Homo, possibly a subspecies of Homo sapiens."
- Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
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It tells us that Neanderthals pooped, just like us. Everybody poops. Even robots [fjcdn.com].
Vegetables out of necessity, or out of preference? (Score:3, Insightful)
One thing I'd be curious to find out is whether or not the Neanderthals were doing this because they preferred vegetables, or because they had nothing else around to eat.
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You get your food from a grocery store, where everything is plentiful.
Thus your anecdote has no bearing on the question.
Go camping for a week without food, and have to scavenge for yourself. See what you 'prefer'.
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I already know the answer to this: room service.
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If you "go camping for a week", you are probably going to be eating berries and mushrooms, with possibly a fish.
You probably are not going to be eating fresh elk.
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That's kind of my point.
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OK. I thought you were going for the "alpha male eats freshly killed flesh" angle.
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Unless there's running involved. Or climbing. Or anything physical.
I don't need to outrun the bear, I need to outrun you.
And if it comes to it, the fattest guy will feed more people.
So, the survival strategy is to make sure you're around at least 2 people who are fatter than you. That's what I do.
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LOL, well, you did say "we" in regards to all of that belly fat.
Which means, at least implicitly, you were in the category of people who wouldn't do so well in a survival situation.
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Not really. While you can go for a long time on sub replacement calories, you do need something. The vast majority of people will start going major league ketogenic, then hallucinate after about 48 hours. Try it sometime. If you're trying to 'survive' - and by that I mean you are in a dangerous situation that requires physical and mental effort to stay alive, starving isn't the best way to ensure survival.
That said, as soon as the TV and Twitter shut down, the majority of the US populace will be frozen
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Maybe they liked them both (Score:2)
Good question, one I guess the paleo environmental folk might be able to shed light on (what species of flora and fauna were in the area). But folk can really like a big steak when they are hungry and equally really enjoy fresh picked fruits on a hot summer's day, there doesn't need to be a conflict on a taste front. From a survival strategy perspective it makes sense to be happy with either hunted or gathered food sources, reduces your risk of starvation. Your tribe's not going to survive that long if you
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I've always assumed that if they were hunter gatherers, part of the 'gathering' is likely to be food derived from plants.
If it has teeth like an omnivore, and poops like an omnivore, it's probably a freaking omnivore.
I should think not long after they got fire, they started cooking stuff.
My guess, they collected anything they knew they could eat, and ate it.
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OK, sure, from the fine article, which apparently you didn't read:
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Please tell us more about how samples indicating a dominance of meat and flesh are indicative of an "omnivorous diet".
Not enough samples. Their diet was probably highly seasonal, with not too much plant matter in the winter.
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In my experience you tend to crave what you habitually eat. The Hmong forage for Solanum nigrum -- black nightshade -- a plant that is not only inedibly bitter for most people, it's actually poisonous if you haven't spent years working up a tolerance to its toxic alkaloids. And here's the kicker: black nightshade grows wild here in the US and the old folks here go looking for it in the woods, even though they can buy meat and non-toxic vegetables in the supermarket. They grew up with the stuff, so they
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Did half the country take a "Hmong Cultures" class a couple years ago? I must have missed it. During the past two years or so, I have seen several references to the Hmong people, with no explanation of who they are. If I mentioned "the plight of the Nukak", I would certainly have to include a reference to their location and what their plight is.
Am I the only one here that only knows the Hmong because of repeated googling about them?
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Some of us are old enough to remember the Vietnam war, which in turn brought us in contact with the long running civil war in Laos. Anti-communist Hmong from Laos fought alongside Americans and after both Vietnam and Laos fell to the Communists many Hmong refugees were resettled here in the US along with their families.
I remember this story about S. nigrum from a newspaper account back in the 80s about foraging by local Hmong refugees. There were lots of stories about Hmong settling in, and because this
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Thank you for the additional information. I'm not old enough to remember Vietnam. I was born during it, in 1970.
I knew a lot of "Vietnamese" moved to the US after the war, but that was how they were always mentioned. As far as I remember, I never saw the term 'Hmong' until a couple years ago.
Also, since I grew up in the upper midwest farm country, our local paper certainly didn't have stories like that one. I remember finding an old copy of one a little while ago (probably at my mom's house), and was surpri
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That explains a lot. I never saw that movie, but I'm sure many here did.
Thanks for the reply. :^)
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There's also mutations where one group can handle a poisonous plant or often fungus that will sicken or kill another group. We see this with milk where Europeans often have a mutation allowing to digest milk and other groups don't. Really the ideal diet varies on sub-type of human and what was available in their ancestral homes.
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It's simple. If they didn't eat their veggies, they wouldn't get any dessert.
More surprised about cooking (Score:1)
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The heat really opens the flavor of the brontocarrots and tomatosauruses.
Coming soon... new releases... (Score:2)
Modern kids (Score:2)
Great...so even Neanderthals ate their veggies...and yet we struggle getting our kids to eat anything green.
Organic poop used to fertilize veggies... (Score:2)
The original "Hole Foods" was born.
The Popular Paleolithic Diet (Score:2)
Seems to be on even slimmer psudeo-scientific ground.
Wasn't everyone antediluvian vegetarian. (Score:2)
Once again science just proving the accuracy of Genesis :)
Study swigned by the famous Dr. El Obvio (Score:2)
This clearly demonstrates that a subspecies of Homo sapiens; H. sapiens neandertalensis had after all the same feeding habits than the rest of the Homo sapiens species!! Amazing. Who would have told?
Another spectacular finding for the team of Dr. El Obvio, preferred disciple of Prof. O'Bvious.
Hail to them!!!
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I suppose it depends on what you mean by "weaker". I don't think that experiments are going to tell us much at all about what neanderthals ate, so in this case observation would seem to have the edge.
Is there such a thing as "observational" and "experimental" science though? I see a lot of experimental work behind observational studies, and a lot of observations behind lab experiments.
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I think he was differentiating because you can not create an experiment that would be neanderthals living in a population so that you could observe and see the results. He was saying with this idea, all you can do is look for things left behind and observe.
Bingo
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The interesting parts of the article didnt make it into the headline. As usual.
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Well, now, I'm an ameteur, but isn't the assumption that brain development required to be a higher mammal requires gigantic amounts of protein intake?
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I thought the assumption was that had apes learned to fish as humans did, they would have evolved brains like ours.
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Well, I guess it depends on how we define 'cooked'.
Spiders and flies do that thing with the enzymes. Crocodilians sometimes age their meat before eating it. Leafcutter ants promote growth of fungus on the plants. Honey involves a couple of steps where you change it from one form to another.
Are any of these what we'd call cooking? Probably not. Does it imply that a very long time ago other critters figured out that sometimes you need to take steps to make something edible? Absolutely.
If we define 'coo
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I assume you mean rhetorical?
Also, a rhetorical question. ;-)
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No, because animals do not control fire. But there are animals which warm/freeze/ferment/marinate/flavor/wash their food (not all done by same type animal of course). But cooking as in 'having control over 200+C heat source' - no.
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If you expand 'cooked' to the more generic 'prepared' then plenty of animals would qualify. In fact if you consider things like pickled herring and kimchee 'cooked' then we could probably argue that many animals do cook their food - crocodiles, for instance, are known to stash their kills in underwater caches for long periods before eating which 'cooks' the flesh using the ch
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It would be cool if an animal figured out how to use natural fires (grassfires, forest fires) to cook a particular animal. But once they smell the smoke, they all run away.
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I've read of predators (most of which don't mind scavenging) who've learned that a fire means once the fire is out, there will be free food lying around in the burned area (animals that didn't make it out in time, and mostly suffocated).
In the same sense that your ancestors are dead (Score:2)
humans ate their neanderthals.
Only in the "Little Red Riding Hood" fairy tale sense where "eating" is a metaphor for sex. Cro-mags and Neanderthals are believed to have been different breeds of one species, which interbred to form modern man.
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Wait a sec. Gramma fucked the Big Bad Wolf?
And then she climbed into his testicles? And the Woodsman castrated him to free Gramma?
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Sounds very oedipal.
How does that make you feel? Does it make you resent your father? What are your first memories of your mother?
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The traditional telling is embellished. Hoodwinked gets some parts right but is also embellished. Given what fairy tale logic, here's what probably happened: The wolf sexually assaulted Granny, took her clothes, tied her up, and locked her in a closet.
But my point is that most ethnic Europeans have some alleles of Neanderthal origin.
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Hmmm .... I'm no geneticist, but doesn't everybody? Since they're our collective ancestors, how could you not?
Or are all of the non-Europeans somehow descended from something else but ended up being exactly the same?
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They're considered an offshoot [wikipedia.org] rather than a direct lineal ancestor (at least for most of us ... I'm not too sure about our CEO).
Re:In the same sense that your ancestors are dead (Score:5, Interesting)
No, Africans south of the Sahara don't have any Neanderthal genes, nor do many (most?) Asian and American populations. Some Asian populations also have Denesovian genes, and another subset has genetic input from a hominid we can only refer to as "unknown" since we don't have any samples of its genetic makeup. The book 'Children Of The Ice Age' has quite a bit of interesting research about Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons. Did you know that population density was so low in ice-age Europe that a person would probably meet no more that 30-50 other people during their entire life? Inbreeding is much less of a threat than most people think.
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