While Neanderthals may not have had access to written language and recipe books, new research suggests they may have passed down food traditions.
The study focused on markings on the prey remains of 2 Neanderthal groups which lived in the nearby caves of Amud and Kebara in Israel over 50,000 years ago.
Despite the caves being only 70km apart, analysis of the cut-marks shows that the 2 groups butchered their food using different techniques.
“The subtle differences in cut-mark patterns between Amud and Kebara may reflect local traditions of animal carcass processing,” says Anaëlle Jallon, PhD candidate at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and lead author of the article.
“Even though Neanderthals at these 2 sites shared similar living conditions and faced comparable challenges, they seem to have developed distinct butchery strategies, possibly passed down through social learning and cultural traditions.”
The researchers examined prey bone samples found in the 2 caves using both macroscopic and microscopic analysis.
While the angles and depth of all the cuts were similar, the cut-marks found at Amud were more densely packed and less linear in shape.
This suggests that while both groups would have used similar tools, they were used in different ways.
“These 2 sites give us a unique opportunity to explore whether Neanderthal butchery techniques were standardised,” explains Jallon.
“If butchery techniques varied between sites or time periods, this would imply that factors such as cultural traditions, cooking preferences, or social organisation influenced even subsistence-related activities such as butchering.”
The distinct patterns cannot be explained by diet, as both groups relied on similar prey.
While the group living at Kebara seemed to have hunted more large prey, the same differences were seen on similar long bones belonging to small, hoofed mammals.
The researchers suggest these differences could not be accounted for by the skill of the butchers.
One possible explanation for this pattern is that the communities were organised in different ways. For example, the number of butchers who worked on any given kill may differ between the 2 groups.
Alternatively, since decaying meat is harder to process, the dense cutting from the Amud cave may indicate that the group was drying their meat out before butchering.
However, more research is needed to make any conclusions.
“The bone fragments are sometimes too small to provide a complete picture of the butchery marks left on the carcass,” says Jallon.
“While we have made efforts to correct for biases caused by fragmentation, this may limit our ability to fully interpret the data.”
However, the results published in Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology do offer valuable clues to help build a better understanding of the Neanderthal way of life.
“Future studies, including more experimental work and comparative analyses, will be crucial for addressing these uncertainties — and maybe one day reconstructing Neanderthals’ recipes,” says Jallon.