This discovery on the food of Neanderthals will disgust you … but it reveals their intelligence

Prepare to completely revise your vision of the eating habits of our prehistoric cousins. Similarly, A team of scientists has just lifted the veil on an old mystery of tens of thousands of years. Therefore, revealing a nutritional strategy of Neanderthals as ingenious as they are repugnant for our modern standards. Nevertheless, This discovery upsets our understanding of their intelligence and their adaptability.

A feast that is not very stifling but strategic – This discovery food neanderthals will

Imagine the scene: in the icy steppes of prehistoric Europe. Moreover, a group of Neanderthals has just cut down an imposing mammoth. Furthermore, Rather than throwing themselves immediately on this bargain, they do something unexpected. Therefore, They wait. For example, They let the carcass decompose under the sun, inexorably attracting clouds of flies. Meanwhile, A week later, they come back … Nevertheless, to harvest this discovery food neanderthals will the thousands of teeming maggots that invaded the putrefied flesh.

This image. Consequently, far from being the fruit of an overflowing imagination, could well correspond to the reality of the daily life of our ancestors. Nevertheless, It is in any case the revolutionary theory defends by a research team led by Dr. Consequently, Melanie Beasley of the Purdue University. and the implications of this discovery far exceed the simple disgust that it can inspire.

The enigma of super-predators

For decades, paleoanthropologists have come up against a disturbing anomaly in the analysis of Neanderthal remains. The nitrogen isotopes ratios found in their bones place them at the same level as the most formidable hypercarnivores of their time: lions of caves. giant wolves, hyenas. A position in the food chain which challenges any evolutionary logic.

How were primates, with a fundamentally herbivore digestive system, were this discovery food neanderthals will they able to compete with the fiercest prehistoric hunters? The traditional response evoked a massive consumption of meat, but this explanation began on a major physiological obstacle: protein poisoning.

Indeed. our organism can not metabolize more than 300 grams of lean protein per day without triggering what nutritionists call “rabbit famine”. Beyond this threshold, maintained for a few weeks, the body literally poisoned, resulting in rapid and potentially fatal deterioration. The Neanderthals, despite their adaptations, remained primates subject to the same biological constraints as us.

The wisdom of the peoples of the cold

To resolve this enigma. Beasley’s team turned to an unexpected source of inspiration: the eating practices of hunter-gatherers of the Arctic regions. The Inuit. confronted with the same nutritional challenges as Neanderthals, have developed remarkable strategies to maximize the fat intake of their diet.

When they cut a caribou. a this discovery food neanderthals will seal, these experienced hunters systematically favor fatty organs – brain, liver, language – abandoning most of lean muscle meat to their sled dogs. Even more surprising, the ethnographic archives are full of examples of indigenous populations regularly consuming putrefied foods teeting with asticots.

This practice, far from being the fruit of necessity or ignorance, reveals a remarkable intuitive understanding of nutritional transformation processes. The flies of flies. by feeding on decomposition flesh, concentrate and transform the available nutrients, becoming real capsules of fat and highly assimilable proteins.

Alchemy of this discovery food neanderthals will maggots

To verify this daring hypothesis, the researchers conducted an experience as rigorous as they are not very steep. They analyzed the isotopic compositions of 389 larvae belonging to three different families of flies. all harvested in animal flesh in controlled decomposition.

The results, reported in Science Advances, exceeded their most optimistic hopes. If putrefaction actually leads to a slight increase in nitrogen concentrations in the tissues. it is the asticots themselves that reveal the real nutritional treasure. Some larvae reach nitrogen concentrations of 43.2%, literally transforming the lean protein into a concentrated superfood.

This biochemical transformation elegantly solves the Neanderthal paradox. By combining putrefied flesh. fatty larvae, our ancestors accessed an optimal nutritional cocktail, rich in essential lipids and highly concentrated protein, without risking protein poisoning.

An underestimated intelligence

Beyond the purely nutritional aspect, this discovery reveals much more sophisticated Neanderthal this discovery food neanderthals will cognitive capacities than we imagined. Managing the controlled decomposition of a mammoth carcass requires remarkable temporal planning. an understanding of the biological cycles and a developed anticipation capacity.

« Imagine the necessary logistics“Explains Beasley. “” They had to assess the optimal decomposition time, plan to return to the site, manage competition with natural scavengers. It is a food strategy of remarkable complexity.«

This revision of our prejudices on Neanderthal intelligence is part of a broader scientific movement of rehabilitation. of this long caricatured species. Far from being primitive brutes. the Neanderthals now appear as ingenious survivors, capable of exploiting ecological niches that we would never have imagined.

The next time you come across an asticot. remember: you may contemplate one of the secrets of the survival of our prehistoric cousins.