Scientists have long thought that Neanderthals were passionate meat eaters. Based on the chemical analysis of Neanderthal residues, they seemed to have as many meat as predators such as lions and hyenas. But as a group, hominines are Neanderthals, our species and other extinct relatives – are not specialized body eaters. Rather, they are more full -fledged, eating a lot of plant foods.
People can have a very carnivorous diet. In fact, many traditional northern hunters, such as the Inuit, mostly survived animal food. However, hominines simply cannot tolerate the high protein content that large predators can. If people eat as much protein as hyper -arnivors do for a long time, without using enough other nutrients, it can lead to protein poisoning – a depletion, even a lethal condition, historically called “rabbit starvation”.
So who could explain the chemical signatures found in the Neanderthal bones, which seem to indicate that they eat tones healthy?
I am an anthropologist who uses elements such as nitrogen is examined by our very ancient ancestral diets. New studies I and I have done offer a secret ingredient in a Neanderthal diet that could explain what’s going on: maggots.
Isotopes relationship reveals what the animal ate
Relationships between different animal bone elements can give insight into what they ate while they were alive. Isotopes are alternative forms of the same element with slightly different mass. Nitrogen has two stable isotopes: nitrogen-14, more abundant shape, and nitrogen-15, heavier, less common shape. Scientists mark the ratio of nitrogen-15 to nitrogen-14 as Δ⁵N and measure it in a unit called Permil.
Once above the food chain, organisms have relatively more isotope nitrogen-15. For example, the grass has a very low Δ&N value. The herbivores accumulate nitrogen 15, which he consumes when eating grass, so his own body has a slightly higher Δ⁵N value. Meat -eating animals is the greatest nitrogen ratio in the food network; Nitrogen-15 of them concentrates on their body.
After analyzing the stable nitrogen isotope ratio, we can reconstruct the Neanderthal diets and early Homo sapiens During the late Pleistocene, which took place from 11,700 to 129,000 years. The fossils of various websites tell the same story – these hominines have high Δ⁵N values. High Δ estate values would usually be helped by the top of the food network, as well as hyperkardines such as cave lions and hyenas with a diet of more than 70% of meat.
But perhaps something else about their diet was the inflating of the values of the Neanderthal Δ estate.
Unveiling the Neanderthal menu
We suspected that the Neanderthal diet may be a different potential source of enriched nitrogen-15. Maggotes that are flying larvae can be a fat -rich food source. They are inevitable after killing another animal, easy to collect high numbers and nutrition benefits.
To investigate this opportunity, we used a data set that was originally designed for a very different purpose: a forensic anthropology project aimed at how nitrogen could help evaluate time from death.
Initially, I had collected modern muscle tissue samples and related magnate in Tennessee University, Knoxville Courts Anthropology Center to understand how nitrogen values change during decomposition after death.
While data can help with modern forensic death studies, in our current study, we have repeated it to check a very different hypothesis. We found that the value of stable nitrogen isotope values modestly as muscle tissues break down, ranging from -0.6 Permil to 7.7 Permil.
This enlargement is more dramatic for magnots that feed for broken fabric: 5.4 Permil to 43.2 Permil. To evaluate Maggot values in the perspective, scientists estimate that the values of the patchocene herbivores Δ⁵n ranges from 0.9 Permil to 11.2 Permil. Maggotes see almost four times larger.
Our study shows that the high Δ estate values observed in the late Pleistocene hominines may be inflated throughout the year by consumption of ⁵n enriched magnots found in dried, frozen or container animals.
Cultural practice forms a diet
2017 My coworker John Septon suggested that the high Δ estimate of the Neanderthals was due to the consumption of rot or rotting meat based on historical and cultural evidence of diet in the northern Arctic.
Traditionally, local nations are almost universally visible to carefully naked, maggoth -infected animal foods as a highly desirable price, not a fasting diet. In fact, many of these nations regularly and often deliberately allowed animal food to be broken down to the point where they creep with magnots, in some cases even start to liquefy.
This rotten food inevitably emits the smell that overcomes that early European researchers, fur traps and missionaries hurt it. However, the local nations viewed foods such as eating well, even subtlety. When asked how they could tolerate the nausea spike, they just replied, “We don’t smell.”
The cultural practice of Neanderthal, similar to the practice of local nations, may be the answer to the secret of their high Δ estate values. Ancient hominins meat, protected, preserved, produced food and raised various items. All of these practices have enriched their Paleo menu food in forms that do not use carnivores of nehominin. Studies show that Δ⁵N values are higher in cooked foods, fluffy muscle tissue from terrestrial and water types, and in combination with our research for flying larvae that feed on the food.
High Δ Rait magicians associated with Putrid Animal Foods help to explain how Neanderthals could include many other nutritious foods except only meat, still registering Δ-1N values we are accustomed to seeing in hyperkardines.
We suspect that the high Δ of the high Δ estimate in the Neanderthals reflect the usual consumption of fatty animal tissues and fermented stomach, most of it in semi-foam or foam states, along with the inevitable and dead ⁵n-⁵nents of the fixed magnates.
What is still unknown
Large larvae are fat -rich, nutritious, dense, ubiquitous and easy to acquire insect resources, both Neanderthals, both early and early Homo sapiensLike the latest interlocutors, they would have used them in full. But we cannot say that Magnai alone explains why Neanderthals have such high Δ⁵N values for their remains.
A few questions about this ancient diet remain unanswered. How many magnates should be consumed to increase the Δ estate values that exceed the expected values only due to the meal eating alone? How do you change the nutritional benefits of the magicians? More experimental studies related to foods, treated, protected and prepared, changes related to local traditional practice can help us better understand our ancient relatives’ nutritional practice.
This article has been published from a conversation, non -profit, independent news organizations that provide you with facts and reliable analysis to help you give meaning to our complex world. It wrote this: Melanie Beasley, Purdue University
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Melanie Beasley received funding from the Haslam Foundation for this investigation.