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You might picture Neandertals as cavemen gnawing on bones around a campfire. Which wouldn't be inaccurate. But Neandertals may have also dined on roasted vegetables and known a bit about medicinal plants, too. So says a study in the journal Naturwissenschaften (The Science of Nature). [Karen Hardy et al., "Neandertal medics? Evidence for food, cooking, and medicinal plants entrapped in dental calculus" (link forthcoming)]
Researchers analyzed hardened dental plaque from five Neandertals found in El Sidrón cave, in northern Spain. Yes, 50,000-year-old dental plaque. And they found a lot lurking between the teeth. Like evidence of nuts, grasses and green veggies, chemical traces of wood smoke, and tiny, intact starch granules, proof Neandertals ate their carbs.
And in one individual, they detected compounds found in the medicinal herbs chamomile and yarrow. The herbs have no nutritional value, and since Neanderthals did have the gene to detect the herbs' bitter taste, the researchers speculate that the cave dwellers were munching on them not as food—but to self-medicate. Not too far-fetched, they say, because primates like chimps also use medicinal plants.
Luckily for the scientists doing this detective work, Neandertals may have known a thing or two about medicine, but they didn't get regular check-ups at the dentist.
—Christopher Intagliata
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]
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7 Comments
Add CommentPerhaps a plaque of medicinal herbs also prevents tooth decay. How were their teeth?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOf course they self-medicated - it's not like they had a doctor's office to go to when they were ill! Plus, they were around for thousands of years, learning which plants were edible, medicinal, etc. I'd bet they knew much more about natural remedies than today's HMO pill-pushers.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSome links about this theme:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.springerlink.com/content/k38296n440584ngl/
http://www.springer.com/about+springer/media/springer+select?SGWID=0-11001-6-1383951-0
http://www.nature.com/news/neanderthals-ate-their-greens-1.11030
Other link on this research:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.york.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/2012/research/el-sidron/
Many other animals self medicate: parrots will go down to certain river banks, along with other animals including some predators, to ingest clay to neutralize toxins from their food. Some monkeys go one better: they come to human campfires for charcoal for the same purpose.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI know it's easy to say "of course they did", and if asked I would have guessed they did, but there is nothing like evidence to illustrate a fact.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat I find curious is that self medication was only discovered in one individual. I don't know all the science involved, but if I assume that the plaque record of an individual spans from the time of adult teeth through death, one would expect to see these compounds in all of the older individuals, right? maybe? Provided that self medication was common.
Good point. Perhaps only that one of the five's deaths was caused by illness...
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