A new study of 28,000-year-old human bones suggests the ancient man ate meat - lots of it, and very little else.
"Their diet was about 90 percent meat," said a scientist in England. A lifestyle so centered on meat means that the early man was able to organize complex hunts that brought down big and dangerous game.
The researchers probed the diet of early man by measuring the isotopic ratios of nitrogen in skulls and jawbones recovered from a cave in Croatia.
"Our bones record the isotope signatures of the foods we have eaten in our lifetimes," another scientist said in a statement. "By measuring these isotope signatures in fossil bones, we can reconstruct aspects of the diets."
Bones formed from a diet rich in meat contain a high ratio of an isotope called nitrogen-15, Trinkaus said. The nitrogen-15 ratio of Neanderthal, he said, was almost like that of an African lion, which means a diet of meat and almost nothing else.
2007-03-04
02:24:35
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