Neanderthal Crab Roast Leftovers Are Found in a Portuguese Cave

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A lot of cities vie for the unofficial title of “seafood capital of the world,” and Lisbon has a great declare. The town, Portugal’s coastal capital, is legendary for its salted cod, sardines and stuffed brown crab. A research printed Tuesday within the journal Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology reveals that these brown crabs have been on the menu for a very long time. In a cave lower than 20 miles from Lisbon, researchers found charred remnants of shells and claws: proof that Neanderthals have been cooking and consuming crab 90,000 years in the past.

The cave website, Gruta da Figueira Brava, was a couple of mile from the coast when Neanderthals lived there. It contained a number of chambers, together with an open “porch” residing space, most likely giant sufficient to accommodate at the very least an prolonged household. Rising sea ranges slowly introduced the Atlantic to the cave door.

Reaching Gruta da Figueira Brava right this moment entails a climb down a craggy cliff face overlooking the ocean. “It was a bit adventurous,” stated Mariana Nabais, a postdoctoral researcher on the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution and an writer of the research. “In a manner, it’s good that it’s exhausting to get there, as a result of that’s what allowed it to protect such unbelievable, unbelievable finds.”

Throughout excavations, she and her staff introduced sediments from the cave again to their discipline lab on the hilltop so that they could possibly be studied, however Dr. Nabais and her colleagues acknowledged some bits of particles straight away.

“You possibly can instantly establish them on website as being crab claws, particularly in Portugal, as a result of we now have a convention of consuming crabs quite a bit,” she stated. “It was a giant shock, particularly as a result of after we have been digging there, we nonetheless didn’t have that concept of Neanderthals actively consuming shellfish.”

The researchers finally discovered 635 bits of crab shells, representing a naked minimal of 33 people, together with remnants of barnacles and sea urchins. A overwhelming majority of the crabs have been the identical species of brown crab served with roe and mustard in Lisbon right this moment. Based mostly on the dimensions of the claws, many of the specimens have been bigger than common, every probably yielding round seven ounces of meat.

The shells lacked telltale indicators of being eaten by different animals, like tooth marks or shattering patterns from being dropped on rocks by birds. As a substitute, a number of the shells have been charred and blackened: an indication that that they had been roasted.

Dr. Nabais stated that the invention, which follows a 2020 research in Science detailing the number of animal remnants discovered within the cave, together with birds and tortoises, is extra refutation for the normal view of Neanderthals, humanity’s closest kinfolk, as dullards in contrast with fashionable people.

“We’ve all the time seen Neanderthals as like these brute cousins,” she stated. One argument towards Neanderthal intelligence was the concept that they have been able to scavenging or searching solely giant prey like elephants, whereas cleverer people adopted a broader food regimen together with fatty-acid-rich fish that promoted mind growth.

“What we see these days, increasingly, particularly within the Mediterranean space, is that these Neanderthals that lived right here have been really consuming small prey,” Dr. Nabais stated. “Now, we all know they have been consuming shellfish as nicely, which was one thing that individuals thought that they wouldn’t be able to as a result of they have been a bit dumb.”

Fred H. Smith, a professor emeritus of anthropology and organic sciences at Illinois State College who was not concerned with the research, praised the researchers’ thoroughness and agreed with their conclusions about Neanderthal versatility and intelligence.

“Twenty, thirty years in the past, mainly, it was thought that Neanderthals weren’t succesful, or at the very least not benefiting from, utilizing these sources,” he stated. “So, we’ve come a great distance.”

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