What if our culinary practices date back more than 70,000 years? A new study shows that our ancestors prepared complex dishes from a variety of ingredients. Apparently, they weren’t on the “paleo diet” that’s popular today.
What if our passion for cooking and good food dates back to prehistoric times? Far from the image of the NeanderthalNeanderthal man devouring a barely cooked piece of meat at the bottom of his cave, it seems that our ancestors had the habit of flavoring their dishes very early and mixing the ingredients. That shows a new study published in the journal Antiquity.
For at least 70,000 years, Neanderthals and Homo sapiens prepared actual meals for themselves and shared among the group. Dishes that require several preparation steps and consist of many ingredients, some of which have the sole purpose of enhancing the flavor of the dish.
A complex culinary practice 70,000 years ago
These results were obtained thanks to the analysis of the remains of petrified meals found at two Paleolithic sites. One is in Greece, in Franchthi Cave. Sedimentary deposits make it possible to go back as far as 13,000 to 11,500 years ago. The other cave, that of Shanidar, is in Zagros in Iraqi Kurdistan. This sanctuary would have welcomed the first modern humans 40,000 years ago, but also Neanderthals 70,000 years ago. Previously, the oldest remains of food were only 14,400 years old. These new paleontological discoveries therefore represent a small revolution and have made it possible to study in particular the diet of the very first hunter-gatherers, but also the way they prepared their meals.
The two rock shelters showed the presence of remains of complex herbal preparations. At the Franchthi site, the remains look like crumbs of burnt bread, flatbread or fine pulp residue topped with coarsely ground legumes. At the older site of Shanidar, wild mustard and pistachio seeds seem to have accompanied the culinary preparations. Even remains linked to Neanderthals show that these hominids mixed wild grass seeds with crushed legumes to form a concoction that was heated with water. A previous study had also found traces of grass seed in the tartar covering the teeth of Neanderthal fossils.
Seasoning dishes, a gesture older than we thought
Through scanning electron microscopic analysis, the researchers were able to clearly identify the nature of these seeds. Their results also indicate that the mixtures made by prehistoric people must have had a fairly bitter taste. Today, when we use the same seeds in our cooking, we take care to soak, heat and peel them to reduce their bitterness and eliminate toxins, and very visibly, our ancestors did the same! However, the remains of meals show that the seed coats were not completely removed, suggesting that prehistoric people partially preserved them to preserve a bitter taste, certainly to bring relief to their dishes.
Our culinary practices would therefore have originated tens of thousands of years ago. This study also shows that Neanderthals, like Homo sapiens, had a very varied diet that included many types of plants: seeds, herbs, roots, legumes, nuts, berries… which they carefully prepared before mixing with meat or fish . Because if our ancestors certainly ate plants, isotopic analysis of their skeletons shows that their main source of protein was meat. Neanderthals would also have been very large consumers, while Homo sapiens would have had a more varied diet.