A prehistoric quenotte has just shed harsh light on the diet of Neanderthals, a recurring debate because the disappearance of our cousins, which occurred around 30,000 to 40,000 years ago, has been frequently attributed to their subsistence strategy. Gold, “some toddlers crunched deer, rabbit and horse from an early age“says today Klervia Jaouen, researcher at the CNRS in a study published in the PNAS. Although several studies have recently come to inform us about the contents of the stomachs of Homo neanderthalensis, there is still no clear consensus on the variability of their diets over time and space. In 2017, work on dental tartar showed that some of them were largely vegetarians. Other studies established on the contrary that the diet of certain Neanderthals consisted of 80% meat. Hence the interest of this original and innovative work.
Zinc betrays the diet after thousands of years
Because it is the first time that the isotopic ratios of zinc contained in tooth enamel have been analyzed to identify the diet of a Homo neanderthalensis, 100,000 to 43,000 years old, discovered at the Spanish site of Gabasa. They reveal that at that time, on this Spanish site, we feasted very early on with game meat. The scientists analyzed a first molar, a tooth that forms between the ages of 0 and 3, and focused on what the toddler had eaten when he was two years old, a few months after being weaned from his mother’s breast. The analysis of zinc isotopic ratios of the small Neanderthal or the small Neanderthal (we do not know its sex), compared to that of other carnivores (wolves, foxes, hyena), omnivores (bears) and herbivores (rabbits, horses, deer, chamois) whose bones were found on the site, gives a good idea of ​​the menus of each of these predators and the isotopic signature associated with their diet. Why focus on such a young subject? “There were only four teeth to analyze and our method is destructive. Meven if it is a few milligrams: we did not have the possibility to sample everything“, recognizes Klervia Jaouen. Teeth are not the best indicator of a long-term diet. “A third molar, or wisdom tooth, provides information on what the person has eaten around the age of 13, continues Klervia Jaouen. If we want to know more, it is better to rely on bones which record data throughout growth and life, but the technique is not possible for zinc.“
A prehistoric quenotte has just shed harsh light on the diet of Neanderthals, a recurring debate because the disappearance of our cousins, which occurred around 30,000 to 40,000 years ago, has been frequently attributed to their subsistence strategy. Gold, “some toddlers crunched deer, rabbit and horse from an early age“says today Klervia Jaouen, researcher at the CNRS in a study published in the PNAS. Although several studies have recently come to inform us about the contents of the stomachs of Homo neanderthalensis, there is still no clear consensus on the variability of their diets in time and space. In 2017, work on dental tartar showed that some of them were largely vegetarians. Other studies established on the contrary that the diet of certain Neanderthals consisted of 80% meat. Hence the interest of this original and innovative work.
Zinc betrays the diet after thousands of years
Because it is the first time that the isotopic ratios of zinc contained in tooth enamel have been analyzed to identify the diet of a Homo neanderthalensis, 100,000 to 43,000 years old, discovered at the Spanish site of Gabasa. They reveal that at that time, on this Spanish site, we feasted very early on with game meat. The scientists analyzed a first molar, a tooth that forms between the ages of 0 and 3, and focused on what the toddler had eaten when he was two years old, a few months after being weaned from his mother’s breast. The analysis of zinc isotopic ratios of the small Neanderthal or the small Neanderthal (we do not know its sex), compared to that of other carnivores (wolves, foxes, hyena), omnivores (bears) and herbivores (rabbits, horses, deer, chamois) whose bones were found on the site, gives a good idea of ​​the menus of each of these predators and the isotopic signature associated with their diet. Why focus on such a young subject? “There were only four teeth to analyze and our method is destructive. Meven if it is a few milligrams: we did not have the possibility to sample everything“, recognizes Klervia Jaouen. Teeth are not the best indicator of a long-term diet. “A third molar, or wisdom tooth, provides information on what the person has eaten around the age of 13, continues Klervia Jaouen. If we want to know more, it is better to rely on bones which record data throughout growth and life, but the technique is not possible for zinc.”
Read alsoShedding new light on food in the Palaeolithic
Until then, to try to define an individual’s place in the food chain, scientists generally had to extract proteins and analyze the isotopes of nitrogen present in the collagen of bones. Over the past 30 years, therefore, it has been analyzes of isotopes of nitrogen in collagen that have provided evidence for the diet of Neanderthals in Europe and Asia. In 2016, the team of physico-chemists from the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Paleoenvironment in Tübingen (Germany) led by Hervé Bocherens, thus carried out an analysis of the atoms of collagen, a protein contained in bones, teeth and the cartilages. She concluded that in general, Neanderthals in Asia and Europe ate 80% of the flesh of large and large herbivores such as mammoths and woolly rhinos. The remaining 20% ​​is possibly a supply of roots and legumes.
The Neanderthal diet compared to that of other carnivores. Credit Bocherens/University of Seckenberg, 2017.
Gold,“this collagen-based method is often only applicable in temperate environments, and rarely on samples over 50,000 years old“, specifies Klervia Jaouen. When these conditions are not met, the analysis of nitrogen isotopes is very complex, if not impossible. This was particularly the case of the molar from the Gabasa site, studied here.
The little Neanderthal was neither cannibal nor blood drinker
Faced with this challenge, the researcher and her colleagues analyzed for the first time the isotopic ratios of zinc contained in dental enamel, a mineral resistant to all forms of degradation. As a result, the Neanderthal or Neanderthal to whom this Gabasa tooth belonged would have been a carnivore, but did not consume the blood of its prey, unlike other carnivores on the site such as the wolf and the hyena. The study of the tooth unfortunately does not allow us to say whether he consumed processed foods, drained of their blood, or cooked. But we know that he loved rabbits, just like them Homo neanderthalensis the archaeological site of Pié Lombard, a rock shelter occupied more than 70,000 years ago in France. which confirms that these Homo were able to hunt small game and were not restricted to large prey.
According to broken bones found at the site and isotopic data, the toddler also ate the bone marrow of its prey without consuming the bones. There is nothing to say that he would have been a cannibal, unlike the Neanderthals of Belgium 47,000 years ago, for example, who might have been forced there by a famine.
Compared to previous techniques, this new method, by analyzing zinc isotopes, makes it possible to better distinguish omnivores from carnivores. The scientists hope to reproduce the experiment on other individuals from other sites, to confirm their conclusions, in particular on the site of Payre, in France, where new research has begun. But Klervia Jaouen also hopes to test her method on the teeth of Australopithecines (more than 3 million years old) which we always wonder when and how much they ate meat, more or less gamey.
Other Neanderthals were vegetarians or seafood lovers
This study should not make us forget that the diet of Neanderthals diversified over time and according to the sites they occupied.
In 2019, the team of Laura Weyrich, a microbiologist at the University of Adelaide (Australia), thus extracted and then analyzed the DNA contained in the dental plaques taken from five Neanderthal bodies discovered on paleontological sites in Europe, dated between 42,000 and 50,000 years ago. A real trap, dental plaque is a deposit of calcium and magnesium phosphate from saliva, mixed with micro-organisms (mainly bacteria) from the mouth and the digestive and respiratory systems, but also small pieces of stuck food. in the teeth.
Result: if one of the first Neanderthals discovered, the Man of Spy (near Namur, in Belgium) discovered in a cave in 1886, consumed woolly rhinoceros and wild sheep (mouflon), that of the cave of El Sidron, in Pilona (northwestern Spain), ate pine nuts, mosses and mushrooms instead. “The Belgian Neanderthals, a hunter and gatherer population, lived in a steppe, while the Spaniards, gatherers, occupied a dense forest“, explained then Bastien Llamas, of the University of Adelaide, co-author of the study. In 2020, another study showed that in Italy, Neanderthals fished and consumed shellfish 90,000 years ago to 60,000 years ago. , while previous work showed that he did not disdain trout and fish.
In short, Homo neanderthalensis was an opportunist. A priori, a guarantee of survival, but that was not enough.
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