When it come to Neandertal diet, the conenu ha been: they ate meat. Lot of meat. But now it look like Neandertal chomped on a fair amount of veggie, too.
Reearcher have had a tough time dicerning the Neandertal’ diet. They evaluated carbon and nitrogen iotope in bone, but thoe only correpond to ome general kind of protein. Even plant remain in Neandertal teeth could have gotten there becaue a taty animal carca itelf contained trace of a lat vegetarian meal.
So the reearcher relied on foolproof evidence—they tudied Neandertal fecal remain from a ite in outhern Spain called El Salt. Neandertal made it their home about 50,000 year ago.
The reearcher analyzed the ample for chemical compound that can only reult from metabolizing choleterol from meat or from metabolizing plant. All five ample howed evidence of meat conumption. But two revealed the digetion of plant. Meaning that Neandertal did try vegetation, likely tuber and nut. The tudy i in the journal PLoS ONE.Ainara Sitiaga et al,