Eats Shoots and Leave Clues: The Neanderthal Diet
It was the strangest thing. While picking through the dental plaque on 50,000-year-old Neanderthal teeth from a cave in Spain, the anthropologist Karen Hardy found some bits of yarrow and camomile.
OK, it might not sound that strange. You’re probably more perplexed by someone choosing to look at ancient dental plaque for a living. But yarrow and camomile are not known for being particularly nutritious—so to a scientist, the obvious question is why would you eat them. Hardy mooted two possibilities: that Neanderthals used these plants as medicine or, intriguingly, as seasoning for other food. Other anthropologists—usually an argumentative bunch—gave both ideas a surprisingly positive reception. But at the same time, no one seemed prepared to say which theory they thought was right. As a science journalist who trained as a palaeontologist, this made me uneasy.
There seemed two ways forward. I could inflict some injuries on myself, eat yarrow and camomile, and watch how well I healed. Or I could cook and eat a typical Neanderthal meal, and see whether adding these plants made it tastier. Not being much of a masochist, I went for option two. As it turned out, self-mutilation might have been simpler.
Martin Jones, an archaeologist at the University of Cambridge, told me that the Neanderthal way of cooking was to “light a fire and just chuck your food in”. A Neanderthal did not have pots, pans, bowls or containers of any sort—let alone a small flat in Wimbledon with a gas oven. I would have to build a wood fire somewhere, but our flat doesn’t have a garden. So I found myself knocking at the door of our very tolerant neighbours, Nick and Kate. “I need to eat like a Neanderthal for an evening. Do you mind if I build a fire in your back garden tomorrow and roast stuff on it?” They agreed. As I said, they’re tolerant.