Neanderthals Weren’t Just Meat-Eating Brutes. They Cooked, Foraged, Fished — and Maybe Even Self-Medicated

Their meals were richer, stranger, and more varied than the old caveman stereotype.

For a long time, Neanderthals were imagined as bulky carnivores of the Ice Age: heavy-browed hunters who lived on slabs of meat, surviving by hunting reindeer, horses and other large animals in the cold landscapes of Europe.

Neanderthals were apex predators, yes. But they were also coastal foragers, plant processors, fat-renderers, bird catchers, and amateur pharmacists. Their diet changed with geography, climate, season, and culture. There was no single “Neanderthal diet.” There were many, and there were varied.

The Teeth Tell a Story

It’s not like we figured out that Neanderthals weren’t eating only meat from one spectacular discovery. No, this came from better science.

Old-school archaeology mostly saw what preserved well: large bones. They came in and saw Neanderthal skeletons along with bones from big animals like deer, horses, bison, and elephants, concluding that this is what Neanderthals ate. But plants, fish, birds, and shellfish often disappeared from the record. This is called a bias, because the archaeological record is biased towards large bones that preserve well.

“Neanderthal dietary reconstructions have, to date, been based on indirect evidence and may underestimate the significance of plants as a food source,” one recent study noted.

But newer methods changed the picture.

Dental calculus, the hardened plaque on ancient teeth, has proved especially revealing. It can trap food particles for tens of thousands of years, which has proven very useful for understanding both Homo sapiens and Neanderthals. In Neanderthal calculus, researchers have found starch grains, plant remains and other microscopic traces of meals that would otherwise vanish.

At Shanidar Cave in Iraq, evidence points to dates, legumes and wild grasses related to barley and wheat. Some of those starch grains show damage caused by heat and water. In other words, they were cooked. Cooking plants can soften tough tissues, release more calories and make starches easier to digest. Neanderthals doing more than just plucking leaves and chewing roots, they were processing food.

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Everywhere researchers look, they find evidence that Neanderthals had a surprisingly varied diet. At Spy Cave in Belgium, Neanderthals ate starchy underground plant parts, including water-lily rhizomes. At El Sidrón in Spain, chemical and DNA evidence from dental calculus has suggested a forest diet that included pine nuts, moss, and even bark. There’s evidence that Neanderthals consumed grains, legumes, dates, pine nuts, mushrooms, mosses, berries, tubers, roots, water lily rhizomes, acorns, figs, and tree bark, depending on where they lived.

Meat was still a consistent part of it, but it wasn’t just meat.

Skilled Hunters and Butchers

When it came to hunting, everything was game for Neanderthals. At Schöningen in Germany, wooden spears and the butchered remains of more than 50 horses suggest coordinated hunting as early as 200,000 years ago. This hunt included Neanderthals and close relatives (possibly even Homo sapiens).

They coordinated large hunting parties and were able to take down virtually any animal in their environment. Straight-tusked elephants stood about 13 feet tall and could weigh up to 14 tons. That didn’t stop Neanderthals. At Lehringen in Germany, an elephant skeleton was found with a yew spear between its ribs. A single such animal could yield more than 7,500 pounds of meat, fat, and organs.

When they took down such an animal, Neanderthals went to great lengths to extract as much as possible from it.

At Neumark-Nord in Germany, dating to around 125,000 years ago, Neanderthals appear to have operated a specialized fat-rendering zone. The bones of at least 172 large mammals (including deer, horses, and aurochs) were crushed into tens of thousands of fragments and heated to extract bone grease.

This grease (and fat, in general) was particularly important. Lean meat isn’t enough to get by, especially in the cold winter time. You need calories and fat, and the fact that they put all the work into it shows that Neanderthals were experts at processing what they hunted.

A Local Menu

Another prevailing stereotype is that Neanderthals were northern people. Neanderthals lived across a huge range of environments, from cold steppe to Mediterranean woodland. Their meals followed the landscape.

On the coast, they gathered from the sea. In Gibraltar, layers in Vanguard and Gorham’s Caves have yielded evidence of mussels, limpets, monk seals, dolphins and large fish. Charred shells near hearths suggest that Neanderthals used fire to open shellfish. In Portugal, at Gruta da Figueira Brava, evidence also points to the harvesting of crabs and shellfish. Neanderthals loved their seafood.

Small land animals were also part of the diet. Rabbits, hares, tortoises and birds appear at a number of Neanderthal sites. These finds are easy to underestimate because of the bias we mentioned earlier, and how easy it is for small bones to get lost in the process. The tools behind this broader diet were not all stone. At Abri du Maras in France, archaeologists found a fragment of twisted cord, made from plant fibers. Cordage opens the door to nets, snares, bags and other perishable technologies that rarely survive. Such tools would have made it easier to catch birds, rabbits and fish.

Evidence from caves in Israel suggests that Neanderthals even had particular cooking styles, which may have been cultural. They had different methods of processing food, and these differences persisted across generations.

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Some evidence even hints at medicinal eating. At El Sidrón, one Neanderthal with signs of a dental abscess and intestinal illness had traces of poplar, which contains salicylic acid (the substance in aspirin), and Penicillium fungus in dental calculus. The finding has been interpreted as possible self-medication, though this is still speculative.

A Complex Neanderthal World

Ultimately, we really need to revise our view of the Neanderthals. The new picture is not of a vegetarian Neanderthal, or of a gentle gatherer replacing the old hunter. It’s more interesting.

Neanderthals were powerful predators when they needed to be. They could hunt large animals, butcher carcasses and extract fat from smashed bones. They ate a lot of meat. But they also ate plants, shellfish, fish, birds, tortoises, mushrooms, nuts and cooked starches. They made use of forests, rivers, coasts and open plains. They adapted to the local environment and maybe had their own cooking styles.

No doubt, Neanderthals deserve more than the old stereotype. Who knows what researchers will find next?