While our human ancestors managed to avoid extinction, Neanderthals didn't share the same fate. Instead, these hominins disappeared at the high point of the last glacial period around 40,000 years ago. Now, scientists have examined what dietary strategies may have influenced whether or not these hominins survived.
Scientists still aren't sure what exactly led to the decline of the Neanderthals. That's why researchers have been examining how dietary strategies may have influenced human development.
In the new study, the researchers turned to what may tell them most about diet: teeth. They examined microwear traces on fossilized molars of Neanderthals and Upper Paleolithic modern humans. More specifically, they looked at specimens from 37 sites dating back to between 500,000 and 12,000 years ago. This revealed what type of diet these hominins had. In addition, the researchers could relate this diet to climatic conditions at the time.
So, what did they find? It turns out that Neanderthals, surprisingly, adapted their diet to the resources that were most readily available and easily accessible. In contrast, humans seemed to have invested more effort in accessing food resources.
In fact, the researchers believe that humans' changes in diet were likely more strongly marked by the use of new technologies in obtaining food. This, in turn, may have given them an advantage over the Neanderthals.
"Actually, one would expect that the Neanderthals would be better adapted to the occasionally very harsh climatic conditions in Ice Age Europe," said Sireen El Zaatari of the University of Tubingen, one of the researchers involved in the new study. "They developed there, while anatomically modern humans developed in Africa and only migrated to Europe much later."
While Neanderthals were capable of adapting to changes in food resources, they seem to have still declined. With that said, the findings do show that the frequent assumption that Neanderthals tended to be inflexible is not at all true.
In fact, the latest findings show that Neanderthals were flexible in their food sources. However, it's possible that additional competition in the form of modern humans may have eventually caused their decline.
"If the differing dietary strategies were already established by the time of the encounter, then modern humans might have had the advantage," said El Zaatari.
The findings were published in the April 27 issue of the journal PLOS One.
