Did Eating Only Meat Lead Neanderthals's Demise?

For the last two decades, advances in molecular biology have deepened archaeologists’ understanding of early human diets. The cool conditions in Northern Europe, such as France and Germany, help preserve collagen in fossil bone. With a technique called stable isotope analysis, we can recover minute amounts of carbon and nitrogen from the collagen in early human bones and find out where the protein they ate came from. Isotopes are groups of atoms belonging to the same element, but they have different masses. Studies of these bones’ isotopes have shown Neanderthals in Northern Europe got 80–90 percent of their protein from animals. That’s up there with the wolves and hyenas. In the arid southern parts of Europe, we’re not so lucky. Collagen in fossil bone easily disintegrates in warmer climates, taking with it the clues to southern Neanderthals’ diets.

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The zinc level in carnivores’ bones is lower than those of their prey. The difference is not affected by age, sex, or decay over time. Zinc ratios can be measured from samples as small as 1 milligram of bone. Even these tiny amounts allow an accurate assessment of an animal’s place in the food chain when they were alive.

The recent study’s analysis of zinc from the tooth enamel of a Neanderthal who lived and died around 150,000 years ago in the Spanish Pyrenees gives new insights into the diet of ancient humans. Zinc isotopes were analyzed from 43 teeth of 12 animal species living in a grassland around the Los Moros I Cave in Catalonia, Spain. These included carnivores such as wolf, hyena, and dhole (also known as mountain wolf); omnivorous cave bears; and herbivores including ibex, red deer, horse, and rabbit. The results brought to life a food web of the Pleistocene steppe, a system of interlocking food chains from plants up to the top carnivores. The zinc in the Neanderthal’s tooth had by far the lowest zinc value in the food web, revealing they were a top-level carnivore.

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Isotopes taken from sites across Europe from remains of the H. sapiens groups who inherited Pleistocene Eurasia from the Neanderthals reveal they had broader dietary range. Plants, birds, and fish were main courses for these early humans. The Pleistocene was the grassland-steppe ecosystem that dominated Siberia during the Pleistocene and disappeared 10,000 years ago. It had a remarkably unstable climate and changed from dry grasslands and wet tundra to coniferous woodlands, constantly shaking up the variety and number of large herbivores grazing there. So, an omnivorous diet would have made these people far more resilient than those who relied on big game hunting. We don’t know much about what happened to Neanderthals when big game populations collapsed. If reindeer failed to show, what could they do? But with rapid progress in biomolecular science, I doubt we will have to wait long to find out. 

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