Analysis of bones from two caves shows prehistoric people butchered the same animals in different ways

Analysis of bones from two caves shows prehistoric people butchered the same animals in different ways

Nothing turns up the heat in a kitchen quite like debating the best way to chop an onion. Now researchers have found even our prehistoric cousins had distinct preferences when it came to preparing food.

Archaeologists studying animal bones recovered from two caves in northern Israel have found different groups of Neanderthals, living at around the same time, butchered the same animals in different ways.

“It means that within all the Neanderthal population, you have several distinct groups that have distinct ways of doing things, even for activities that are so related to survival,” said Anaëlle Jallon, of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the first author of the research.

  • venusaur@lemmy.worldEnglish
    8·
    2 days ago

    Could be preference or could just be that they did something that worked and stuck with it, assuming they weren’t attending dinner parties with each other and seeing differing techniques.

    • tychosmoose@piefed.socialEnglish
      3·
      1 day ago

      I also wonder how closely they can be dated. +/- 100 years is a long time and I would expect that’s a smaller interval than provided by their dating methods.

      Still, Neanderthal dinner parties are nice to imagine.

      • venusaur@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        1 day ago

        That’s true.

        Haha yeah. Put on their best pelts or whatever and bring their best fermented berry mash. Stay up all night ooga booga’ing around the fire.

  • Carrolade@lemmy.worldEnglish
    71·
    2 days ago

    debating the best way to chop an onion

    I get their point, but this is one of the few things I’ve actually never seen debated. Your options are very limited by the shape you want the finished product in.

    • tychosmoose@piefed.socialEnglish
      5·
      1 day ago

      I’ve seen a few ways for chopped onion. Chopped meaning that we want reasonably small consistent size pieces.

      1. Root on, halved through the N & S poles, one half laid flat, vertical N/S cuts, leaving connection to root intact, cuts parallel to table almost to root, latitude cuts moving to the root end. Then a final cleanup chop of the large pieces from the root end.

      2. Same as 1 but no parallel to table cuts. More cleanup chop at the end.

      3. Same as 1 but radial longitudinal cuts instead of vertical.

      4. Same as 2 but radial longitudinal cuts instead of vertical.

      5. Same as 1 but without halving the onion first. Done in the hand.

      6. Same as 4 but without halving the onion first. Done in the hand.

      7. Same as 4 but root off before halving.

      8. Same as 7 but latitude cuts before radial.

      9. Same as 8 but latitude slices laid flat before radial cuts.

      10. Same as 7 but root off after halving.

      11. Same as 8 but root off after halving.

      12. Nana method, higgledy piggledy paring knife action in the hand.

      Classical western method is 1. Both 2 and 4 are very common in restaurant settings in my experience. I like method 8. Any other way feels either too fiddly or too sloppy. But I have seen each of these in action.