Neanderthals ate shellfish 150,000 years ago: study

http://www.physorg.com ^ | 09-15-2011 | Staff

[Red Badger]

Neanderthal cavemen supped on shellfish on the Costa del Sol 150,000 years ago, punching a hole in the theory that modern humans alone ate brain-boosting seafood so long ago, a new study shows.

The discovery in a cave near Torremolinos in southern Spain was about 100,000 years older than the previous earliest evidence of Neanderthals consuming seafood, scientists said.

Researchers unearthed the evidence when examining stone tools and the remains of shells in the Bajondillo Cave, they said in a study published online in the Public Library of Science.

There, they discovered many charred shellfish -- mostly mussel shells -- left by Neanderthals. They were able to date the shells by radiocarbon testing to about 150,000 years ago.

That is "almost contemporaneous" to the earliest evidence of modern humans eating shellfish at Pinnacle Point in South Africa 164,000 years ago, said the study led by the University of Seville's Miguel Cortes Sanchez.

"This discovery makes the Bajondillo Cave the oldest record of this activity among Neanderthals, as the earliest evidence until now did not go back further than 50,000 years," said Francisco Jimenez Espejo, researcher at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), which was part of the study.

"Many researchers argue that eating shellfish is one of the behaviours that define modern humans and to a certain extent an adaptive advantage that allowed homo sapiens to expand," Espejo said.

"But this investigation shows that at the same time as homo sapiens in southern Africa, homo neanderthalensis in the southern Iberian peninsula used the same resources."

The study was released Wednesday and is available online at: http://www.plosone … #authcontrib

[bgill]

Wow, big creatures ate little creatures!!!

More of my tax dollars down the drain.

[count-your-change]

Where are the lemon rinds? If you don't put a squeeze of lemon juice in the shell fish to blind’em a little bit they'll see where they're going and keeping crawling back up.

[Vendome]

In other news:
Man was thought to have walked upright 150,000 years ago.

[Red Badger]

My question is, “Where’s the beer bottles?”................

[count-your-change]

That question shows a real lack of understanding of the virtues of primitive man who lived in harmony with nature and himself and only fought when it was necessary to preserve the advancements he had made.

Beer Bottles? They were recycled of course.

[Red Badger]

I can live in harmony with nature and myself with beer...........

[blueunicorn6]

You should have seen the ex-wife’s family at a crab feed. I counted my fingers after dinner to make sure they were all there.

[decimon]

Neanderthals ate shellfish 150,000 years ago

Then they converted to Judaism and starved to death.

And now you know...the rest of the story.

[Red Badger]

The Neanderthals are alive and well, it seems.........

[bert]

A brave man it was who first an oyster et

[mountainlion]

Partially. Journalists don’t take science classes

Politicarts don't take economics either.

[blueunicorn6]

And if the crab wasn’t bad enough, you should have seen them with mashed potatoes. They had to have a huge pot of mashed potatoes, with gravy, every evening. It always reminded me of one of those Jack London books where a wolf gets shot and the other starving wolves devour it. I made the mistake one evening of asking “Please pass the mashed potatoes?” I tell you, if looks could kill...I’d have been dead 30 or 40 times. I think the youngest brother was sizing me up to figure out how much gravy they could make out of me.

[muir_redwoods]

Remember, you’re not reading what a scientist wrote, you’re reading what a journalist thought a scientist said.

[Oratam]

They must have really liked them to walk thousands of miles to get them.

I remember from my 5th grade social studies class that the Indians in the east relocated to the Atlantic coast for the winter as the snow shut down the interior woodlands to hunting. Archeologists know this from the enormous middens (representing centuries of use) found along creeks and streams a mile or so from the open ocean.

I wonder if that's the case with the Neanderthals.

[mountainlion]

Remember, you’re not reading what a scientist wrote, you’re reading what a journalist thought a scientist said.

Journalist bias? That would never happen./s

I like to make fun of global warming and evolution also.

[TASMANIANRED]

Duh, shell fish are easy to catch...

[cidrasm]

Journalist bias? That would never happen./s I like to make fun of global warming and evolution also.

It's not bias, per se, it's mostly ignorance.

[SunkenCiv]

Since Palter brought it up...

The Scars of Evolution:
What Our Bodies Tell Us
About Human Origins
by Elaine Morgan

"The most remarkable aspect of Todaro's discovery emerged when he examined Homo Sapiens for the 'baboon marker'. It was not there... Todaro drew one firm conclusion. 'The ancestors of man did not develop in a geographical area where they would have been in contact with the baboon. I would argue that the data we are presenting imply a non-African origin of man millions of years ago.'"

[SunkenCiv]

the underlying paper:
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0024026

http://www.plosone.org/article/showImageLarge.action?uri=info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0024026.g001

http://www.plosone.org/article/showImageLarge.action?uri=info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0024026.g003

[SunkenCiv]

GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach	join list or digest view topics view or post blog bookmark post a topic subscribe
Thanks decimon. If they'd eaten Chinese 150,000 years ago, they'd have been hungry again 149,999.999 years ago. The Neandertal Enigma by James Shreeve in local libraries Frayer'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] To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.