Study Reveals Neanderthals Had a Good Sea Food Diet of Sharks, Dolphins and Seals

Groundbreaking research showed that Neanderthals enjoyed a complete seafood diet of sharks, dolphins, and seals around 100,000 years ago, challenging long-held assumptions about their primitive eating habits, according to Science. The discovery at the Figueira Brava cave in Portugal showed that our ancient relatives were as good at exploiting marine resources as early modern humans. "We all have that image of the primitive Neanderthal that eats lots of meat," said Filipa Rodrigues, an archaeologist from the University of Barcelona, who participated in the study. "Now, we have this new perspective that they explored the marine resources like Homo sapiens did."

In it, the research team found more than 560 remains of fish bones, along with clams, mussels, crabs, waterfowl, seabirds, seals, and dolphins, one mile from the coast when the Neanderthals inhabited it. Today, the cave is directly on the coast in Portugal, about 20 miles south of Lisbon. The excavation from 2010 to 2013 indeed consisted of remarkable dedications by the researchers. Dr. Rodrigues said that she crawled "like a worm" to collect the sediments ranging from 86,000 to 106,000 years old while working in extremely cramped conditions, as per The New York Times.

It wasn't until 2012, though, that the discovery of an unusual vertebra by lead researcher, João Zilhão, sealed the deal. He explained, "I was going through the sediment with my trowel and all of a sudden I spotted something and went 'Wow! Looks like a fish vertebra.'" Further confirmation showed it belonged to a shark—an indication of just one element of what seemed to have been an expansive marine diet.

Analysis of the contents of the cave suggested that seafood might have made up about half of these Neanderthals' diet. The remainder was terrestrial animals, such as horses, deer, ibex, and aurochs, supplemented by plant foods like pine nuts. This omnivorous diet is similar to that of modern Homo sapiens groups in southern Africa.

The findings are a big key to understanding the range of Neanderthal abilities. "The real Neanderthals are like what we've been able to show at Figueira," Zilhão said. "They are no different from people living in the same setting and the same environment 100,000 years ago in South Africa or 7,000 years ago across the river in Portugal." This research has thus dismantled the previous theories, which believed that only modern humans were cognitively able to exploit marine resources. In Figueira Brava, this evidence shows evidence of systematic consumption of seafood from Neanderthals and attests that the latter is equally capable of developing complex gathering strategies.

This finding is of particular relevance because some academics previously hypothesized that dietary sources of brain-enhancing fatty acids derived from seafood fueled early modern humans' advanced cognition by providing essential nutrients. It thus helped explain the burgeoning inventive and cultural activity among populations of modern humans beginning around 200,000 years ago. Such an idea now seems ever less credible, following on from all other evidence—the discovery in an Ice Age Spanish cave showed that such foods were apparently well within a Neanderthals diet too, reinforcing previous studies casting doubt on the proposed cognitive disparities between both species.