Expert: John Shea - 10/23/2008

Question
Hi i am doing a report and I was wondering what type of food Neanderthal
people ate and how they cooked it.

Thank you

Answer
Madison
From variaiton in the Nitrogen and Carbon isotope composition of their bones, we know the Neandertals at a lot of meat and fat, mainly from large terrestrial mammals that were grazers (mammoth, wooly rhino, horse), but probably also mixed feeders like aurochs (wild cattle) bison, various deer (red, roe, fallow), ibex, wild boar.  They may have hunted bear, too, but probably did so by raiding hibernation dens.  Recent studies from sites near Gibralter (Spain) suggest they occasionally ate fish and marine mammals (seal) too. The amount of meat in their diet probably varied through time and space (more meat in colder habitats, seasons; more plants in warmer habitats, seasons), as it does in the diets of most omnivores.
Cooking probably involved mostly roasting (holding meat over fire or placing it on heated rocks).  There is no evidence for boiling (no pottery, no heated stones [used to heat water in leather containers]).
That's it, in a nutshell.  Need more information, write again.  Need references? See Stringer and Gamble's In Search of the Neandertals or Ian Tattersall's The Last Neandertal.  For more sophisticated scholarly work on this, look up papers by Mary Stiner, Michael Richards, Herve Boecherns.
Cheers,
John Shea