Take care of your teeth, because in a few millennia, they may be used to find the canteen menu! By studying a molar more than 100,000 years old, a Franco-German team suggests that the diet of this former representative of Homo neanderthalensis was probably much meatier than previously imagined.
A Neanderthal man more carnivorous than a wolf
Geochemists have analyzed the zinc isotopes present in the enamel of a Neanderthal tooth from the Gabasa site in northern Spain. “Enamel keeps very well over thousands of years”begins Klervia Jaouen, research fellow at the Geosciences and Environment laboratory in Toulouse and co-author of the study published in Pnas, Monday, October 17.
“In this enamel, the lower the zinc isotope value, the more meat the diet contained”, she continues. In this individual, the proportion was quite small. Our man was therefore a large carnivore, consumer in particular of deer, horse and rabbit according to the bones of animals found nearby.
The researchers compared the values from the teeth of our distant cousin with those of other animals, carnivores and herbivores, from the lynx to the chamois. And again, the Neanderthal seemed to eat more meat than the lynx or the wolf at the same time. “This surprising result may be explained by the fact that it did not consume blood, unlike carnivorous animals, and blood causes zinc isotopes to rise”, assumes the researcher. The remains of meals found next to it, on the other hand, indicate consumption of the bone marrow.
Resource-based diets
The diet of the Neanderthals of the Iberian Peninsula is hotly debated, although it is well established that the populations of northern Europe ate almost exclusively meat. Previous studies of the dental plaque of Spanish individuals dated to 50,000 years ago had shown a markedly more vegetable diet, with mosses and fungi.
For some, this was just a form of self-medication, Neanderthals eating plants only to heal themselves. For others, this transition to plants would have been late, perhaps in connection with changes in landscapes or the arrival of A wise man and its omnivorous diet. “Diets obviously had to vary according to the regions of the world and the resources available.recognizes Klervia Jaouen. But we are sure that the Gabasa individual was a carnivore. » The team now hopes to carry out the same analyzes on the enamel of other teeth from other Neanderthals in Europe, to compare the results.