Did Neandertals Eat Raw Flesh and Brains?

In an earlier Psychology Today post, I suggested that Neandertals may have gone extinct because they had a penchant for cannibalizing one another. It may have been a successful strategy for nearly 100,000 years until the time modern Homo sapiens entered Europe about 50,000 years ago and did not practice cannibalism. A relatively recent archaeological investigation (Rougier et al., 2016) now sheds light on a new aspect of Neandertals’ cannibalistic practices: they may have eaten other Neandertals’ flesh and brains raw.

Rougier and her colleagues investigated a cave in Belgium (Troisième cave in Goyet) and analyzed 99 bones belonging to five Neandertals (four adolescents/adults and one child). The bones were mostly tibias (the larger of the two lower leg bones), femurs (thigh), skulls, humeri (upper arm), and mandibles (lower jaw). The bones dated to between 40,500 to 45,500 years ago, thus they represented a sample of some of the last living Neandertals, as Neandertals appear to have gone extinct by about 30,000 years ago. The authors also found many horse and reindeer bones scattered among the Neandertal remains, preliminarily indicating Neandertals may have cannibalized even when other animal meat was plentiful. The Neandertal bones had been butchered and cannibalized similarly to the animal remains, which indicates the Neandertal bones were not likely part of a funerial practice or mortuary ritual. They found that the Neandertals’ arms and legs had been cut off (disarticulated) and skinned, scraped of their flesh, their bigger bones (thighs and legs) had been broken open to eat the nutritionally rich marrow, and their brains had been scraped out and eaten. It also appeared that the lower jaw on at least one skull had been cut off from the rest of the skull. There was also one case where either a toe or finger had been chewed upon. [Side note: It’s interesting that the vegetable okra is also called Lady’s Fingers.]

Was the Neandertal flesh and brains eaten raw?

There is no question about whether Neandertals used fire: they did. However, Rougier et al. did not find strong evidence for fire at the Troisième site. Further, they were successfully able to extract DNA from the Neandertal bones and that meant that cooking, roasting, or boiling the flesh was highly unlikely, as the DNA would have been destroyed in the heating process. This strongly implies the flesh of both Neandertals and animals had been eaten raw. It is interesting to note the modern culinary and gustatory practice of eating raw beef is known as steak tartare, and the eating of raw fish is known as sashimi. And this is where not only Neandertals' penchant for cannibalism may have contributed to their extinction, but the practice of eating meat raw may also have contributed to their extinction as well.

Source: Frederick L. Coolidge

It is well known that raw meat often contains dangerous bacteria like salmonella, E. coli, Campylobacter, and listeria, all of which can cause serious illnesses and even death. However, given the vulnerability of Neandertals to extinction over their last 100,000 years due to their low population densities and fewer reproducing group members (called an effective population), any additional factors impinging upon their "fragile" existence, such as diseases from cannibalism, may have played an additional role in their extinction. There is also the possibility that given the evidence for the eating of Neandertal flesh and brains earlier about 120,000 years ago at Moula-Guercy (France) and later at Troisième cave, a prion-caused (an abnormal protein) disease such as mad cow (bovine spongiform encephalopathy or BSE) may have been present. BSE is one of the disease forms of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE), and it is often more present in the brains of animals than in their flesh. In humans, TSE produces a severe form of dementia, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, that kills people very rapidly (within a couple of years or faster). In New Guinea, those people who practiced cannibalism were well known to suffer from kuru, which means to shake or tremble, because those were some of its initial symptoms. It has also been found that TSE may initially affect the cerebellar brain network, and the cerebellum is responsible for fine and gross motor movements (and also thinking). Interestingly, women and children appeared to be more susceptible to kuru, as it was a cultural practice more likely among them than the adult men. The incidence of kuru declined precipitously with the decline of cannibalism in New Guinea from the 1950s to the present.

Thus, Neandertals’ practice of cannibalizing each other may have accounted for their extinction in at least two ways: (1) it dangerously reduced their overall population numbers, and (2) eating raw brains and flesh may have introduced dangerous bacteria and prion-induced brain diseases. There is little or no evidence that Homo sapiens practiced cannibalism in these areas in Europe during the Troisième time period and up to the time Neandertals went extinct about 30,000 years ago. It also appears that Homo sapiens' entry into Europe about 50,000 years ago started a Neandertal migration into less resource-rich areas and ultimately may also have led to their extinction. Finally, one speculation: Just like some modern gourmands enjoy steak tartare on a regular basis, is it possible that this Neandertal practice of eating brains that spanned at least 80,000 years (Moula-Guercy to Troisième) was not only a pragmatic practice (reduce competition and provide nutrition), but also gustatory? That possibility reminds me of a new version of the 1948 movie, I Remember Mama, which might be called, I Dismember Mama.

Want to read more about Neandertals? Try: Wynn, T. & Coolidge, F. L. (2012). How to think like a Neandertal. Oxford University Press.