Want to cook like a Neanderthal? Archaeologists are learning the secrets

To learn how Neanderthals prepared and cooked their food, the archaeologists conducted a series of hands-on experiments using flint pieces to butcher small birds. They found that the flint pieces were surprisingly effective at butchering birds, they said. New paper The researchers, published in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology, also concluded that roasting the birds would have severely damaged their bones, making them unlikely to be preserved in the archaeological record.

According to the authors, Neanderthals were able to thrive over a wide geographical area for over 200,000 years, so it’s natural that archaeologists are interested in how they were self-sufficient. There has been research into Neanderthals killing and hunting large prey. Neanderthals were skilled hunters known for killing bears and other carnivores. A Middle Paleolithic lion fibula found in the eastern Iberian Peninsula had notches, indicating that the lion had been butchered, while other lion bones from the same period found in southwestern France had notches indicating that the skin had been removed.

and As we reported Last year, researchers found evidence of what may be the oldest known example of a lion hunt, based on detailed forensic analysis of a cave lion skeleton that bore traces of wounds from a wooden spear some 48,000 years ago.

The team tested their hypothesis by reconstructing the trajectory of the wooden-tipped spear as it struck the ribs, matching the direction, impact angle and depth of penetration. Based on these, it appears the spear penetrated the left side of the cave lion’s abdomen, passed through vital organs and struck the right side of the ribs. The same study also found evidence that the cave lion’s claw bones had been denuded of their skin about 190,000 years ago.

But smaller prey like birds have received less attention. “Birds are a complementary food source that may have played an important role in Neanderthal adaptation and survival,” writes co-author Mariana Navaís of the Catara Institute of Palaeoecology and Human Social Evolution in Spain and her colleagues. So they designed a pilot study to simulate early human cooking and butchering methods, creating a database of characteristic traces that provide baselines and help archaeologists better analyze remains by comparing the traces on remains with the database.

Birds roasted on a bonfire

Navais and his colleagues collected frozen specimens from birds that had died under natural conditions in wildlife reserves in Portugal and selected taxonomic representatives of species that Neanderthals would have hunted in the Iberian Peninsula: carrion crows, janthus montanus and turtle doves. All five specimens had been plucked.

The two bodies were dismembered alive, using student-made replicas of the flint flakes where necessary. The methods used drew from archaeological evidence and ethnographic data. The scientists then cleaned and dried the bones and examined them under a microscope for distinctive cut marks, breaks and burn marks. They also analysed the flint flakes for signs of wear and damage, finding tiny half-moon shaped scars on their edges.

“Using flint flakes to cut meat requires a great deal of precision and effort that I had not fully appreciated prior to this experiment.” Navais says:“The pieces were sharper than we initially thought and required careful handling to make precise cuts without injuring our fingers. These field experiments highlighted the practical challenges involved in Neanderthal food processing and cooking and showed concrete links to their daily lives and survival strategies.”

The remaining three birds were roasted whole (without dismembering) over hot charcoal at 500°C, first on their belly for four minutes, then turned over for a further three minutes. The team was careful to maintain a constant temperature and monitor the cooking time to avoid overcooking the meat. “Perhaps because we removed the feathers from the birds before cooking, the roasting process was much quicker than expected.” Navais says:“In fact, the cooking itself took less than 10 minutes, the time spent preparing the charcoal was what mattered.”

The team also analyzed bones from cooked birds. In the former case, the bones were very brittle, some of them shattered, and almost all of them had black or brown burn marks, with some bones having black stains inside their cavities. “Because the bones of roasted birds are easily broken or lost, roasting practices may go undetected at archaeological sites,” the authors write. “These observations suggest that cooking methods may have a significant impact on the preservation of remains in archaeological contexts, affecting the archaeological visibility of certain cooking methods.”

Navasi and his colleagues emphasized that this is just a pilot study with a very small sample size and limited species. The types of birds that Neanderthals ate may have been more diverse. And despite the careful control of the experimental conditions, it is impossible to precisely replicate Neanderthal methods, real-world conditions, and the broader cultural context. They called for further research to extend the experiment to more bird species and different cooking methods.

Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology, 2024. DOI: 10.3389/fear.2024.1411853 (About DOIs).