Neanderthals wouldn't have eaten their sprouts either

PhysOrg ^ | August 12th, 2009 | Denholm Barnetson

[SunkenCiv]

Spanish researchers say they have found that a gene in modern humans that makes some people dislike a bitter chemical called phenylthiocarbamide, or PTC, was also present in Neanderthals hundreds of thousands of years ago... The scientists made the discovery after recovering and sequencing a fragment of the TAS2R38 gene taken from 48,000-year-old Neanderthal bones found at a site in El Sidron, in northern Spain, they said in a report released Wednesday by the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC)... Substances similar to PTC give a bitter taste to green vegetables such as Brussels sprouts, broccoli and cabbage as well as some fruits. But they are also present in some poisonous plants, so having a distaste for it makes evolutionary sense... What intrigued the researchers most is that Neanderthals also possessed a recessive variant of the TAS2R38 gene which made some of them unable to taste PTC -- an inability they share with around one third of modern humans... Excavations since 2000 at the site at El Sidron, in the Asturias region, have so far recovered the skeletal remains of at least 10 Neanderthal individuals.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

I have to disagree with you.

Green bells are not unrippened red bells but their own type of pepper.

I have five types, (green, red, yellow, orange and blush) growing in my garden.

[wildbill]

Not sure how this thread morphed from Brussel Sprouts to peppers.

Note that the hot varieties of peppers grow in the hottest countries where they are often used in cooking to disguise the smell and taste of spoiled foods like meats.

How would peppers know to grow and evolve in hot tropical countries to help the inhabitants? Another great mystery of life.

[wendy1946]

I’d view the Neanderthal as a very advanced extinct ape, the most advanced member of the same family as chimps and gorillas. We are totally unrelated to any of them other than for the remote possibility that we might have been genetically re-engineered somehow or other from one of them. That’s at least possible, if highly unlikely.

[KarlInOhio]

Strange. I think Brussel Sprouts are some of the natiest "food" known to man. I don't think I've had any since I've moved out of my parents' house. But the article stated that the dislike of sprouts is connected to sensitivity to PTC and I remember when my high school biology teacher did a demonstration with everyone in the class to see who could taste a bitter chemical. I couldn't taste it. I think the chemical was PTC. Maybe I don't hate the bitterness of sprouts, but being unable to taste the bitterness leaves me tasting its underlying nastiness.

[PIF]

dolphins?

You mean there is evidence that they built sea-going boats fast enough to hunt them? Like to see that...

[rightly_dividing]

Substances similar to PTC give a bitter taste to green vegetables such as Brussels sprouts, broccoli and cabbage

If Neandertal had lived in the South, he would have known that a stick of butter or pork seasoning will fix many nasty veggies.

[ccmay]

Brussels sprouts, ewww! I’d rather eat dirt, so I guess I’m one of the people who can taste this chemical. I remember my mom serving them up for the first time ever and wondering how human beings could eat such foul-tasting weeds, but I guess she and my dad were non-tasters.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

Not sure how this thread morphed from Brussel Sprouts to peppers.

Maybe because Brussel Sprouts are incidental to the story. Brussel Sprouts have only been around for the last thousand years so Neanderthals wouldn't have been able to eat them. :)

[curmudgeonII]

Probably not, they’re not related. :’) Green (sweet bell) peppers are not yet ripe; red bell peppers are ripe. Green ones are much better after they’ve cooked (not unlike onions, they sweeten up). I’ll eat green peppers in stuff, or as the container for stuffed peppers, but while I like their look, I don’t care for them too much. :’)

Letting some of my chemistry be of some use I have found that they are not so horrendous after cooking [but are still inedible] and that I can eat around them - the stuffing in bell peppers for example - without a problem. So whatever it is is both somewhat heat labile and insoluble.

[ElkGroveDan]

It would be interesting to learn if this gene is found in humans of non-European/Middle-Eastern descent, particularly Southern African populations.

[ElkGroveDan]

The original diet of Neanderthals was probably banannas and colobus monkeys as is still the case with chimpanzees.

I find that hard to believe seeing as how the big hairy Neanderthals lived and evolved in cold environs bereft of bananas and monkeys.

[wildbill]

Where did Brussel Sprouts come from?

Was this a horrible mutation from cabbage?

[coconutt2000]

So Bitter Not Even A Cave Would Eat It.

[SunkenCiv]

The dolphin bones with butchering marks were found in Neandertal rubbish pits, along with seal bones similarly marked.

[PIF]

OK. But how did they get the animal? Did they catch it or was it washed up on a beach? How often did this occur? Was it a one time event or a regular occurrence?

[SunkenCiv]

No one knows (at this time); whatever they used may not have survived all this time. Seals could have been speared on the beach. Dolphins would require hook/line, nets, or boats and spears. Could also be the general friendliness of the dolphin was exploited, in which case any hand-held blade might have done the trick.

[PIF]

“No one knows...”

From where I stand watching N theories come and go over some 60 years, I think we’ve got the Ns all wrong. But what “right” is, I don’t know - just that what we have now is not BS, but something like that.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

Sort of.

Actually Brussels Sprouts, broccoli, kale, kohlrabi, bok choy, and cauliflower are all descendants of the wild mustard plant. And wild mustard is something that the Neanderthals probably ate.

(And yes I am a plant geek)

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

Isn’t cabbage in that wild mustard group? Not to mention cultivated mustard.

[wildbill]

How unfortunate that the Neanderthals didn’t eat the wild mustard into extinction.

Look at all the icky veggies we moderns wouldn’t have to deal with.