By Bruce Bower
Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Neandertals are often thought of as Ice Age hunters who craved nothing so much as a juicy mammoth steak. But these ancient human cousins favored surf-and-turf when the opportunity arose, a new investigation finds.
In two caves on the eastern side of the Rock of Gibraltar, scientists have unearthed evidence that Mediterranean-dwelling Neandertals ate a varied diet of land and sea animals that put them on a culinary par with Stone Age Homo sapiens, or modern humans.
These finds support the view that Neandertals behaved in ways that have often been attributed only to modern humans, such as regularly visiting seaside haunts to hunt and gather marine animals, according to a team led by anthropologist Christopher Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London. Most Neandertal sites lie in inland parts of Europe and the Middle East, where researchers have traditionally thought the human relatives spent most of their time.
Discoveries in the two caves also play into the hypothesis — first raised by study coauthor Clive Finlayson of the GibraltarMuseum — that Neandertals originally lived in Mediterranean seaside areas and returned there once modern humans entered northern Europe and the Middle East.