Forget what you know about simpleminded cavemen. Scientists have discovered that Neanderthal diets were sophisticated, their tools efficient, and their development more similar to ours than researchers ever imagined.
Neanderthals are widely viewed as big-game-hunting carnivores who lacked the culinary expertise of modern humans. Now researchers working at two sites on Gibraltar have discovered that Neanderthals were in fact skillfully exploiting the diverse dietary riches of their coastal environment around 40,000 years ago—some 10,000 years before the ancestors of modern humans ever set foot on the peninsula.
A study published in September in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences [subscription required] shows that Neanderthals ate seals, dolphins, and fish. They also cooked mussels from the rivers on their hearths and heated the long bones of monk seals to get at the marrow inside.
A separate study also revealed Neanderthals as surprisingly gifted toolmakers. Neanderthal flint knives are stout and ...
