By Anna Goldfield
One of the more tenacious misconceptions about Neanderthals is that they were exclusively meat eaters.
Sure, in some of the colder regions of Europe plant food would have been very seasonally limited, so meat was almost certainly a large part of those locals’ diets. But in warmer, more resource-rich regions, their menu would have been more varied; they didn’t just gnaw on mammoth thighs. Neanderthals lived in all sorts of different ecosystems in Europe and the Levant during the more than 200,000 years that the species existed. There was no monolithic Neanderthal diet.
Today, evidence from the Neanderthal alimentary tract (the gastrointestinal system, from the mouth through to the anus) is helping researchers understand exactly what might have been on the menu hundreds of thousands of years ago.
Let’s start at the top end — the mouth. Tooth enamel is the most durable substance in the human body, and Neanderthal teeth have become a rich source of information. Much of this comes from dental calculus — not a bizarre form of tooth-based math, but rather hardened tooth plaque that can contain…
