Neanderthals eating salmon 40,000 years ago in the Caucasus
Neanderthals eating salmon 40,000 years ago in the Caucasus
Article created on Tuesday, September 17, 2013
Why did anatomically modern humans replace Neanderthals in Europe around 40,000 years ago? One hypothesis suggests that Neanderthals were rigid in their dietary choice, targeting large herbivorous mammals, such as horse, bison and mammoths, while modern humans also exploited a wider diversity of dietary resources, including fish.
This dietary flexibility of modern humans would have been a big advantage when competing with Neanderthals and led to their final success.
Fish consumption
In a joint study, Professor Hervé Bocherens of the University of Tübingen, Germany, together with colleagues from the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg, Russia and the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels, Belgium have found at a cave in the Caucasus Mountains indirect hints of fish consumption by Neanderthals.
The scientists challenge the hypothesis of evolutionary advantage of modern humans on basis of dietary choice. Bone analyses ruled out cave bears and cave lions to have consumed the fish whose remains were found at the Caucasian cave.
The hypothesis on dietary differences between modern humans and Neanderthals is based on the study of animal bones found in caves occupied by these two types of hominids, which can provide clues about their diet, but it is always difficult to exclude large predators living at the same time as being responsible for at least part of this accumulation.
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