Unfortunately for them, they couldn't fight off the Cavity Creeps and went extinct.
Posted on 04/29/2008 1:18:25 PM PDT by blam
Neandertals Ate Their Veggies, Tooth Study Shows
Sara Goudarzi
for National Geographic News
April 28, 2008
Tiny bits of plant material found in the teeth of a Neandertal skeleton unearthed in Iraq provide the first direct evidence that the human ancestors ate vegetation, researchers say.
Little is known about diet of Neandertals (also spelled Neanderthals), although it's widely assumed that they ate more than just meat.
Much of what is known about their eating habits has come from indirect evidence, such as animal remains found at Neandertal sites and chemical signatures called isotopes detected in their teeth.
The new hard evidence is microfossils of plant material that investigators found in the dental plaque of 35,000-year-old Neanderthal teeth, said lead study author Amanda Henry, a graduate student in hominid paleobiology at The George Washington University.
"The formation of dental [plaque] traps the plant microfossils from food particles within the matrix of the plaque deposits, so the microfossils are protected and are a unique record of the plant foods put into the mouth," Henry said.
"So we can say with confidence that this individual Neanderthal ate plants," she added.
Henry discussed her findings at the annual Paleoanthropology Society meeting last month in Vancouver, Canada.
The Shanidar Skeleton
Neanderthals lived in parts of Europe and Asia for more than 200,000 years and disappeared around 30,000 years ago.
They lived in many different environments and survived numerous climatic changes, including some of the coldest and harshest glacial periods, Henry said.
"It seems logical to me that they took advantage of any food sources they had available in their environments, which would vary from place to place and from time to time," she said.
But there had been little hard evidence of variety in their diet, she added. "I began this study with the hopes of exploring any possible variation in Neanderthal plant consumption."
The skeleton Henry studied was discovered in the 1950s at the cave site of Shanidar, in the Zāgros Mountains of northeastern Iraq (see map of Iraq).
Dubbed Shanidar III, the skeleton is that of a male possibly in his 40s and includes four teeth and several bone fragments.
The discoverers of the Shanidar III, Ralph and Rose Solecki, sampled the soil around the skeletons for pollen. Analyses revealed elevated levels of pollen grains of unusual plants around one of the skeletons.
"The Soleckis interpreted this as strong evidence for the dietary use of plants, and even took it a step further and argued that this was evidence of intentional burial with flowers as grave goods," Henry said.
This prompted Henry to sample the teeth of Shanidar III in 2007.
Three of the teeth had excellent preserved plaque that contained microscopic fossils of plant material, she explained.
"We know that this individual ate a variety of plants, including grass seeds, more commonly called grains today," Henry said.
What Did Neandertals Eat?
Henry cautions that Shanidar III is only one fossil and does not provide enough evidence to make conclusive statements about the entirety of the Neandertal diet.
"The finding suggests that characterizing Neanderthals as obligate meat-eaters may be wrong, but there is still a lot more work to be done on this issue," Henry said.
Matt Sponheimer is a researcher at the University of Colorado in Boulder who was not involved with this study.
In a 2006 study published in the journal Science, he showed that the carbon isotopes preserved in the teeth of early human ancestors were evidence of a varied diet.
Henry's method provides new data that approach the issue from a new angle, he said.
But the technique, according to Sponheimer, does not indicate whether an individual Neandertal ate plants once or a thousand times.
It also doesn't show the relative proportions of a food type in the individual's diet.
"Thus it is but one inherently limited technique of paleodietary reconstruction among many," he said.
"By using a variety of techniques in tandem, we are going to get a much more realistic picture of paleodiets."
No wonder they went extinct . Cro-Magnons RULE .
Unfortunately for them, they couldn't fight off the Cavity Creeps and went extinct.
Can’t eat T-Rex burgers all the time!
If asked, I think that 99.9% would respond that they thought these ancients ate vegetables.......so much for more money “NOT WELL SPENT”.
The Neandertal EnigmaFrayer's own reading of the record reveals a number of overlooked traits that clearly and specifically link the Neandertals to the Cro-Magnons. One such trait is the shape of the opening of the nerve canal in the lower jaw, a spot where dentists often give a pain-blocking injection. In many Neandertal, the upper portion of the opening is covered by a broad bony ridge, a curious feature also carried by a significant number of Cro-Magnons. But none of the alleged 'ancestors of us all' fossils from Africa have it, and it is extremely rare in modern people outside Europe." [pp 126-127]
by James Shreeve
|
|
|||
Gods |
Thanks Blam. |
||
|
· Mirabilis · Texas AM Anthropology News · Yahoo Anthro & Archaeo · · History or Science & Nature Podcasts · Excerpt, or Link only? · cgk's list of ping lists · |
|||
right, abd I bet next we'll learned they cried on occasion, helped with the housework, and weren't afraid to show their feminine side.
Taste for flesh troubled NeanderthalsThe extinction of the Neanderthals could have been caused by their choosy appetites - they ate virtually nothing but meat... "They were picky eaters," says Dr Paul Pettitt, at the University of Oxford, UK. "And this tells me that they are really unchanging - doing the same old thing year after year... Neanderthals were excellent hunters," Dr Petitt told BBC News Online. "But the issue that was at stake was whether they hunted every day of their lives or whether it was just a summer outing." ...The early humans themselves may have been better hunters than the Neanderthals, depriving them of their kills. Or the hunted animals may have been struck by disease or migrated away.
by Dr Damian Carrington
BBC News Online
Monday, 12 June, 2000What the Hominid AteAnalyzing carbon atoms locked up in tooth enamel, two researchers challenge the widely held belief that Australopithecus africanus -- an upright, walking pre-human hominid that lived in southern Africa -- ate little more than fruits and leaves. Matt Sponheimer, an anthropology graduate student at Rutgers University in New Jersey, and Julia Lee-Thorp of the University of Cape Town, South Africa, looked at four A. africanus fossil skeletons unearthed from South Africa. Living about 3 million years ago, A. africanus may be a direct ancestor of modern humans. A. africanus teeth were large and blunt with thick enamel, ideal for crushing nuts and chewing fruit as opposed to the sharp incisors one would want to rip into meat. The first stone tools, which would help in eating meat, didn't appear until about half a million years later. Sponheimer and Lee-Thorp took a new approach, looking at the chemical composition of the tooth enamel. After chipping about two milligrams of enamel with a diamond-tipped dental drill, the researchers analyzed the samples for the isotope carbon-13, which contains one extra neutron in the nucleus compared to the usual form of carbon. What Sponheimer and Lee-Thorp found was that the teeth of A. africanus had an in-between amount carbon-13 -- more than the fruit eaters, less than the grass eaters.
by Kenneth Chang
The credit must go to Neanderthal mommies.
“young man, you are not going outside the cave to play until you eat your cauliflower.”
Cauliflower?!? Ugh. Oh, now I see how they named their kids... ;’)
Study explores plausibility of bulbs and tubers in the diet of early human ancestors
PhysOrg | Friday, July 25, 2008 | UC Santa Cruz
Posted on 07/25/2008 8:15:37 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2051557/posts
|
|
|||
Gods |
Just updating the GGG info, not sending a general distribution. |
||
|
· Mirabilis · Texas AM Anthropology News · Yahoo Anthro & Archaeo · · History or Science & Nature Podcasts · Excerpt, or Link only? · cgk's list of ping lists · |
|||
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.