Les néandertaliens mangeaient des fruits de mer il y a 150 000 ans
Source - http://www.lemonde.fr/planete/article/2011/09/15/les-neandertaliens-mangeaient-des-fruits-de-mer-il-y-a-150-000-ans_1572941_3244.html#xtor=RSS-3208
Une étude réalisée par des chercheurs espagnols montre que les néandertaliens mangeaient des fruits de mer il y a 150 000 ans, comme les Homo sapiens. Cette découverte, faite grâce à la trouvaille de restes de coquillages dans la grotte de Torremolinos, dans le sud de l'Espagne, est antérieure de cent mille ans à la précédente preuve que l'homme de Néandertal mangeait des fruits de mer.
"De nombreux chercheurs estiment que la consommation de fruits de mer est l'un des comportements qui définissent l'homme moderne et une habitude qui a facilité l'expansion des Homo sapiens, raconte Francisco Jimenez Espejo, chercheur au Conseil supérieur des recherches scientifiques (CSIC). Mais cette étude montre qu'au même moment, des Homo sapiens en Afrique du Sud et des néandertaliens sur la péninsule ibérique avaient cette même habitude".
Une datation par radiocarbone a permis aux chercheurs d'estimer l'âge de ces restes de coquillages à 150 000 ans. Cette découverte vient contredire la théorie selon laquelle seuls les Homo sapiens mangeaient du poisson, ce qui aurait permis un plus rapide développement de leur cerveau et donc leur expansion. La plus ancienne preuve que l'Homo sapiens mangeait des coquillages a été découverte en Afrique du Sud et montrait une consommation de coquillages remontant à cent soixante-quatre mille ans.
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ANT 203 : Néandertal et Homo Sapiens / Neanderthal and Homo Sapiens
Neanderthal man lived on seafood far earlier than previously thought
Fiona Govan
Source - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/spain/8765346/Neanderthal-man-lived-on-seafood-far-earlier-than-previously-thought.html
Much as modern day man enjoys tucking into a plateful of seafood paella when visiting the Costa del Sol, Neanderthals living on the Iberian coast 150,000 years ago supplemented their diet with molluscs and marine animals.
Archaeological examination of a cave in Torremolinos unearthed early tools used to crack open shellfish collected off rocks along the Iberian coast and found fossilised remains of the early meals.
The discovery is the earliest of its kind in northern Europe and shows that early man were fish eaters in Europe some 100,000 years earlier than previously thought.
The findings suggest that early coastal cavemen supplemented their hunter/gatherer diet of nuts, fruits and meat from animals such as antelopes and rabbits with seafood.
A team of archaeologists from Seville University and scientists from the National Council for Scientific Investigation (CSIC) published their research this week after a lengthy investigation involving the scientific dating of fossilised remains from the cave.
The Cueva Bajondillo on Andalusia's southern coast near Malaga contained remains of burned mussel shells and barnacles indicating that Middle Paleolithic hominids had collected and cooked the shellfish for consumption.
The discovery suggests that Neanderthals in Europe and Archaic Homo sapiens in Africa were following parallel behavioural trajectories but with different evolutionary outcomes, the paper claims.
"It provides evidence for the exploitation of coastal resources by Neanderthals at a much earlier time than any of those previously reported," said Miguel Cortés Sánchez who led the Seville University team.
"The use of shellfish resources by Neanderthals in southern Spain started some 150,000 years ago," the paper concluded. "It was almost contemporaneous to Pinnacle Point (in South Africa) when shellfishing is first documented in archaic modern humans."