Molar Macrowear Reveals Neanderthal Eco-Geographic Dietary Variation

Neanderthal diets are reported to be based mainly on the consumption of large and medium sized herbivores, while the exploitation of other food types including plants has also been demonstrated. Though some studies conclude that early Homo sapiens were active hunters, the analyses of faunal assembla...

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Main Authors:	Fiorenza, Luca, Benazzi, Stefano, Tausch, Jeremy, Kullmer, Ottmar, Bromage, Timothy G., Schrenk, Friedemann
Format:	Online
Language:	English
Published:	Public Library of Science 2011
Online Access:	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3060801/

id	pubmed-3060801
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	pubmed-30608012011-03-28 Molar Macrowear Reveals Neanderthal Eco-Geographic Dietary Variation Fiorenza, Luca Benazzi, Stefano Tausch, Jeremy Kullmer, Ottmar Bromage, Timothy G. Schrenk, Friedemann Research Article Neanderthal diets are reported to be based mainly on the consumption of large and medium sized herbivores, while the exploitation of other food types including plants has also been demonstrated. Though some studies conclude that early Homo sapiens were active hunters, the analyses of faunal assemblages, stone tool technologies and stable isotopic studies indicate that they exploited broader dietary resources than Neanderthals. Whereas previous studies assume taxon-specific dietary specializations, we suggest here that the diet of both Neanderthals and early Homo sapiens is determined by ecological conditions. We analyzed molar wear patterns using occlusal fingerprint analysis derived from optical 3D topometry. Molar macrowear accumulates during the lifespan of an individual and thus reflects diet over long periods. Neanderthal and early Homo sapiens maxillary molar macrowear indicates strong eco-geographic dietary variation independent of taxonomic affinities. Based on comparisons with modern hunter-gatherer populations with known diets, Neanderthals as well as early Homo sapiens show high dietary variability in Mediterranean evergreen habitats but a more restricted diet in upper latitude steppe/coniferous forest environments, suggesting a significant consumption of high protein meat resources. Public Library of Science 2011-03-18 /pmc/articles/PMC3060801/ /pubmed/21445243 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0014769 Text en Fiorenza et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
repository_type	Open Access Journal
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building	NCBI PubMed
collection	Online Access
language	English
format	Online
author	Fiorenza, Luca Benazzi, Stefano Tausch, Jeremy Kullmer, Ottmar Bromage, Timothy G. Schrenk, Friedemann
spellingShingle	Fiorenza, Luca Benazzi, Stefano Tausch, Jeremy Kullmer, Ottmar Bromage, Timothy G. Schrenk, Friedemann Molar Macrowear Reveals Neanderthal Eco-Geographic Dietary Variation
author_facet	Fiorenza, Luca Benazzi, Stefano Tausch, Jeremy Kullmer, Ottmar Bromage, Timothy G. Schrenk, Friedemann
author_sort	Fiorenza, Luca
title	Molar Macrowear Reveals Neanderthal Eco-Geographic Dietary Variation
title_short	Molar Macrowear Reveals Neanderthal Eco-Geographic Dietary Variation
title_full	Molar Macrowear Reveals Neanderthal Eco-Geographic Dietary Variation
title_fullStr	Molar Macrowear Reveals Neanderthal Eco-Geographic Dietary Variation
title_full_unstemmed	Molar Macrowear Reveals Neanderthal Eco-Geographic Dietary Variation
title_sort	molar macrowear reveals neanderthal eco-geographic dietary variation
description	Neanderthal diets are reported to be based mainly on the consumption of large and medium sized herbivores, while the exploitation of other food types including plants has also been demonstrated. Though some studies conclude that early Homo sapiens were active hunters, the analyses of faunal assemblages, stone tool technologies and stable isotopic studies indicate that they exploited broader dietary resources than Neanderthals. Whereas previous studies assume taxon-specific dietary specializations, we suggest here that the diet of both Neanderthals and early Homo sapiens is determined by ecological conditions. We analyzed molar wear patterns using occlusal fingerprint analysis derived from optical 3D topometry. Molar macrowear accumulates during the lifespan of an individual and thus reflects diet over long periods. Neanderthal and early Homo sapiens maxillary molar macrowear indicates strong eco-geographic dietary variation independent of taxonomic affinities. Based on comparisons with modern hunter-gatherer populations with known diets, Neanderthals as well as early Homo sapiens show high dietary variability in Mediterranean evergreen habitats but a more restricted diet in upper latitude steppe/coniferous forest environments, suggesting a significant consumption of high protein meat resources.
publisher	Public Library of Science
publishDate	2011
url	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3060801/
_version_	1611446152075411456

Molar Macrowear Reveals Neanderthal Eco-Geographic Dietary Variation

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