Doctoral Student Makes Discovery On Neanderthal Eating Habits

A doctoral student studying hominid paleobiology has pioneered a method for analyzing reindeer bones from around 65,000 to 12,000 years ago, an accomplishment that allows scientists to further understand the eating habits of early humans.

Early humans flocked to reindeer meat when the temperature dropped, J. Tyler Faith discovered.

"We see a steady increase in the abundance of reindeer, associated with declines in summer temperature," Faith said.

Faith analyzed bones from the Grotte XVI archaeological site in southern France in order to better understand the relationship between early humans and animals, and how this was affected by changes in the environment.

Faith's new findings help to understand the differences between Neanderthals and the modern man. He said differences in hunting behavior cannot explain why Neanderthals dropped out of existence between 40,000 and 50,000 years ago.

"Variation in the types of animals hunted and the parts of those animals that were exploited and processed by the human and Neanderthal occupants of Grotte XVI can be explained largely by environmental change, rather than behavioral or technological differences," Faith said.

His study was called "important, insightful and innovative" by Donald Grayson, a renowned Grotte XVI researcher and professor at the University of Washington, in an interview with Discovery News.

Faith has previously worked to develop "quantitative methods for measuring changes in how humans butchered and transported large animal remains."

He has also done research at the Shompole conservation area in southern Kenya, where he studied animal bones as a way to understand living wildlife.

For his dissertation, Faith is researching the extinction of large mammals in southern Africa. He hopes to determine whether human hunting pressure or changes to the environment contributed to the extinction of large mammals.

Including this study, Faith has been published five times in The Journal of Archeological Science, and has also been featured in Discovery News. He recently submitted work to the Journal of Human Evolution. Faith said he hopes to continue researching in East and southern Africa after he receives his Ph.D. and eventually hopes to become a professor at a research-oriented university.

"I have had a great time at GWU - I couldn't be happier anywhere else," Faith said. "I was excited by the many research opportunities available here in my program and at the National Museum of Natural History."

A new one today, from USA Today...We can't post articles fronm that site. I'll just tack it here:

Ancient Tooth Suggests Neanderthals Were More Mobile

By Elena Becatoros, Associated Press

ATHENS — Analysis of a 40,000-year-old tooth found in southern Greece suggests Neanderthals were more mobile than once believed, paleontologists and the Greek Culture Ministry said Friday.

Analysis of the tooth — part of the first and only Neanderthal remains found in Greece — showed the ancient human to whom it belonged had spent at least part of its life away from the area where it died.

"Neanderthal mobility is highly controversial," said paleoanthropology Professor Katerina Harvati at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.

Some experts believe Neanderthals roamed over very limited areas, but others say they must have been more mobile, particularly when hunting, Harvati explained.

Ian Tattersall, curator of anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, said the tooth analysis provided a rare piece of hard evidence.

"This is a very interesting finding in the sense that we don't actually know how far Neanderthals tended to move in their lifetime," said Tattersall, who is not connected to the Greek study.

"It is consistent with the picture that is building of Neanderthals leading a fairly mobile life over large tracts of land."

Until now, experts only had indirect evidence, including stone used in tools, Harvati said. "Our analysis is the first that brings evidence from a Neanderthal fossil itself," she said.

Harvati was part of the team that carried out the analysis on the tooth, found in a seaside excavation in Gythio in Greece's southern Peloponnese region in 2002.

The findings were published in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

The team from the Max Planck Institute, led by Department of Human Evolution professor Mike Richards and Harvati, analyzed tooth enamel for ratios of strontium isotope, a naturally occurring metal found in food and water. Levels of the metal vary in different areas. As it is absorbed by the body, an analysis of its levels can show where a person lived.

Eleni Panagopoulou of the Paleoanthropology-Speleology Department of Southern Greece said the levels of strontium isotope found in the tooth showed that this particular Neanderthal grew up in a different area — at least 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) away — from its discovery site.

"The analysis results ... will contribute to solving one of the central issues of paleoanthropology, that of the mobility of the Neanderthal," Panagopoulou said.

"Our findings prove that their mobility was significant and that their settlement networks were broader and more organized than we believed," she said.

Given that Neanderthals also coexisted with modern man in some parts of Europe, "one could presume that this mobility would facilitate the contacts of the two populations on a cultural and, perhaps, on a biological level."

Professor Clive Finlayson, an expert on Neanderthal man and director of the Gibraltar Museum, disagreed with the finding's significance.

"The technique is interesting, and if we could repeat this over and over for lots of (individuals) then we might get some kind of picture," he said.

"(But) I would have been surprised if Neanderthals didn't move at least 20 kilometers in their lifetime, or even in a year ... We're talking about humans, not trees."

Reprise from 436. Re: Latest Neandertal DNA Study, dated March 29, 2000 06:36:06 EDT, my old "Ancient Times" group on "The Globe".

Ancient Food News - 48,000 BCE: Neandertal cutting implements manufactured in assembly line production on established cooking sites... Manuel Vaquero of Universitat Rovira i Virgili in Tarragona, Spain, has analyzed the spatial distribution of numerous Neandertal stone implements from two sediment layers in northeastern Spain's Abric Romani rock shelter, deducing a kind of workstation assembly line manufacture of small cutting instruments on established cooking sites there (Science News, 10/16/99, reporting on the September issue of Antiquity)

Carson I.A. Ritchie in Food in Civilization makes the most comprehensive case for the Neolithic invention of soup. "Evidence suggests that the Neaderthalers had evolved quite sophisticated cooking techniques. They were able to keep alive members of the group who were apparently either very elderly or lifelong invalids. The remains of one young man found near La-Chapelle-aux-Saints in France were those of a cripple who could have been of no use in hunting for the group. Another skeleton was that of an old man who had his teeth worn down to such an extent that he would have found it impossible to chew meat. There was no milk in those days, the food on which, in later times, old toothless people were kept alive. It seems at least likely that people of this sort were nourished on a diet of soup. Now the invention of soup making opened the door for all kinds of other sophisticated cookery.

What went on in the Neandertal kitchen is a matter for conjecture, but one sensible suggestion is that he boiled animals in their skins. The hide of a flayed animal would be suspended on forked sticks, filled with meat and water, and a fire lighted beneath it. After some time the water would boil, the meat would be cooked, and the broth could then be eaten by invalids. The skin would not catch fire with the heat because it would be cooked by the water. The experiment of boiling water in a bag made of fairly thick paper demonstrates that this kind of cooking is a practical idea. There can be no doubt that cooking in a skin took place in many parts of the world, and it was still being done in Ireland as late as the sixteenth century... Until recently, Icelanders used to steam their bread in the boiling water of the hot springs by simply wrapping it in some waterproof substance and then dangling it in the hot spring at the end of a rope...

Another way in which Neandertal extended his list of recipes was by using hot stones. The hot-stone technique meant the invesntion of frying. In addition, stones, heated to great heat on a campfire, could be transferred to any receptacle filled with water. A sufficiency of hot stones would induce the water to boil. [While] anthropologists have doubted the feasibility of primitive man's being able to pick the hot stones out of the fire... two stout poles, tied together with a thong, provide a pair of tongs with which even the hottest objects can be removed from a fire. This was the technique used by gun founders in Southeast Asia to remove pieces of slag from a furnace..." (Beaufort Books, 1981)

Tasteless joke time: if Neandertals really were speechless, what did they do when they had Tourette's Syndrome? ; )

Neandertal Architecture - Apart from making structures out of mammoth bones, Neandertals also made tents out of wood and animals skins. An example of this is at the French site of Terre Amata, which is 400,000 years old. These huts were extremely large, measuring to up to about twenty-five feet long and more than twelve feet wide (Tattersall 1995). In the inside of the hut, archaeologists found a fireplace, a hearth, numerous stone tools, and broken animal bones. Very few of the fauna found suggested that perhaps this could have been a butchering site.

It seems to me that since Neandertal preyed on creatures as large as the mammoth, butchering shelters might need to be built near the kill.

Stone Tools Made By Another Kind Of Human by Dr David Whitehouse - Scattered through the region, the team discovered 409 or remnants of prehistoric tools, including 14 associated with the mid- Palaeolithic period (between approximately 200,000 and 35,000 years ago). Most of these 14 stone tools are made using a technique usually associated with Neandertal man. The abundance of Neandertal stone tool remnants from the Palaeolithic period may help answer questions about the introduction of farming into Europe, Davis said. The Palaeolithic and Mesolithic periods, spanning from 750,000 to 11,000 years ago, represent a time before agriculture began. It was about 8,000 years ago that modern man's relatives in the Neolithic Age are known to have grown crops and domesticate animals.

Neandertalers were more muscular than ourselves, had large faces with long ridges on thick-boned skulls, were adept at working stone tools, were capable hunters and there are indications that they had a complex society with death rituals.

Neandertal built structures, manufactured tools and used them, interred their dead, probably had speech, [yet] were "another kind of human" and were not "modern man's relatives."

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.