Neanderthals: how a carnivore diet may have led to their demise

[Judi Lynn]

Published: November 3, 2022 11.51am EDT

Imagine that you have an unhealthy interest in your neighbours’ lives. Unable to ask them directly, you rifle through their rubbish bins. You find the bones of cooked chickens and try and work out what else they eat.

This is a bit like how archaeologists study the diets of extinct humans such as the Neanderthals and early homo sapiens. This is about more than satisfying curiosity. Understanding our ancestors’ diets may reveal critical clues about their evolutionary success or failure.

A recent study which analysed zinc from the tooth of a Neanderthal from Spain reveals they were mainly carnivores, wherever they lived. This discovery helps explain why they became extinct.

Neanderthals dominated Europe and western Asia during the last 200,000 years of the Ice Age, while homo sapiens were developing in Africa. Their remains and characteristic stone tools are abundant across Europe and the near East, and in smaller numbers as far east as Tadjikistan (which shares a border with China).

More:
https://theconversation.com/neanderthals-how-a-carnivore-diet-may-have-led-to-their-demise-193764

[Deuxcents]

1. I wonder what will be learned of us 10,000 years from now..

[I_UndergroundPanther]

2. I do know this

We did not evolve to eat the carb loaded
sugar filled diets we eat now. Maybe we can evolve to eat this way someday.

Eating a keto diet has made my diabeties much easier to manage.
My mom got a genetic test and had a surprising amount of neanderthal dna mixed in with the rest of her genetic make up.

But she could eat carbs fine.

Some of our family members on her side had diabeties. Wonder if the neanderthal was just enough to make a western diet harder on us. It would be interesting if a study was done on it.

[wnylib]

3. What about the Inuit and other

far northern populations whose diets have been mainly meat and fish? The fish nutrients are beneficial, but plant life is scarce.