CAVEMEN ate a monotonous diet of mainly reindeer and horse, analysis of their teeth reveals.
German experts tested tooth rot in Neanderthals remains from France.
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Scientists have found cavemen ate a ‘monotonous’ diet of mainly reindeer and horse, after analysing their teethCredit: Refer to Source – Alamy
They found they were carnivores — contrary to theories they were fish eaters.
And checks on the bones of a year-old baby showed they were breastfed by a meat-eater.
Researchers said the findings put paid to “bizarre recent interpretations” that cavemen and women lived on aquatic plants, or were cannibals.
The researchers said that as well as confirming the Neanderthals as carnivores, the new study seems to indicate that they had a “very monotonous diet”.
Dr Michael Richards, of the Simon Fraser University in Canada, said: “These new compound-specific isotope measurements confirm earlier interpretations of Neanderthal diets as being composed of mainly large herbivores, although of course they also consumed other foods such as plants.”
Professor Jean-Jacques Hublin, director of the Department of Human Evolution at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, said: “This study confirms that when Homo sapiens arrived in Europe and met Neanderthals, they were in direct competition for the exploitation of large mammals.”
