Neandertales of El Sidrón conclude that they ate plants

2017/03/09 Galarraga Aiestaran, Ana - Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Eboluzioa
• Paleontologia
• Arkeologia

The Neanderthals of the cave of El Sidron (Asturias) have found that they ate pine nuts, mushrooms and moss, analyzing the genetic material extracted from the edge of the teeth. However, they have found no evidence to show that they ate meat. According to the researchers, to some extent it is surprising, since so far it has been considered that they were mainly carnivores, based on fossils from other deposits like the Spy II of Belgium.

They have also confirmed that they used medicinal plants to fight diseases. This was already known, in this case have found remains of fungi and Penicillium poplars. The first is antibiotic and the second contains salicylic acid, the same active component as aspirin.

On the other hand, they have managed to extract the oldest genome of a microorganism, from the edge of the Neanderthal teeth. Methanobrevibacter is an arc oralis that have calculated that, in evolution, the strain of the Neanderthals and that of our species were separated 112,000-143,000 years ago.

The complete study has been published in the journal Nature.