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.
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.
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.
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.
Yeah. I think it would be more surprising if they all did things the same way.
Totally