How about some tasty woolly rhinoceros
for dinner?
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[March 09, 2017]
By Will Dunham
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Ancient DNA from
dental plaque is revealing intriguing new information about Neanderthals
including specific menu items in their diet like woolly rhinoceros and
wild mushrooms as well as their use of plant-based medicine to cope with
pain and illness.
Scientists said on Wednesday they genetically analyzed plaque from
48,000-year-old Neanderthal remains from Spain and 36,000-year-old
remains from Belgium. The plaque, material that forms on and between
teeth, contained food particles as well as microbes from the mouth as
well as respiratory and gastrointestinal tracts.
At Belgium's Spy Cave site, which at the time was a hilly grassy
environment home to big game, the Neanderthal diet was meat-based with
woolly rhinoceros and wild sheep, along with wild mushrooms. Some 12,000
years earlier, at Spain's El Sidrón Cave site, which was a densely
forested environment likely lacking large animals, the diet was wild
mushrooms, pine nuts, moss and tree bark, with no sign of meat.
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The two populations apparently lived different lifestyles shaped by
their environments, the researchers said.
The researchers found that an adolescent male from the Spanish site had
a painful a dental abscess and an intestinal parasite that causes severe
diarrhea. The plaque DNA showed he had consumed poplar bark, containing
the pain-killing active ingredient of aspirin, and a natural antibiotic
mold.
"This study really gives us a glimpse of what was in a Neanderthal's
medicine cabinet," said paleomicrobiologist Laura Weyrich of Australia's
University of Adelaide, lead author of the study published in the
journal Nature.
The findings added to the growing body of knowledge about Neanderthals,
the closest extinct relative of our species, Homo Sapiens, and further
debunked the outdated notion of them as humankind's dimwitted cousins.
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A girl looks the replica of a neanderthal skull displayed in the new
Neanderthal Museum in the northern town of Krapina, Croatia on
February 25, 2010. REUTERS/Nikola Solic/File Photo
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"I definitely believe our research suggests Neanderthals were highly
capable, intelligent, likely friendly beings. We really need to
rewrite the history books about their 'caveman-like' behaviors. They
were very human-like behaviors," Weyrich said.
The robust, large-browed Neanderthals prospered across Europe and
Asia from about 350,000 years ago until going extinct roughly 35,000
years ago after our species, which first appeared in Africa 200,000
years ago, established itself in regions where Neanderthals lived.
Scientists say Neanderthals were intelligent, with complex hunting
methods, probable use of spoken language and symbolic objects, and
sophisticated fire usage.
The researchers also reconstructed the genome of a 48,000-year-old
oral bacterium from one of the Neanderthals.
"This is the oldest microbial genome to date, by about 43,000
years," Weyrich said.
(Reporting by Will Dunham; Editing by Sandra Maler)
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