What did neanderthals hunt and eat?

Question

what was the most common or average type of food that neanderthals in the paleolithic times eat?

Answer 1

I was always under the impression they hunted...and often died trying to capture Saber tooth cats and baby woolly mammoths. Perhaps also eohippus or it's later relations=they were medium/small 4 legged critters that were the first ancestors of modern horse.

Answer 2

Neanderthals, much like we are today, were opportunists, in that they would exploit any food source that they could rely on.

In the Neanderthal camp sites that have been unearthed, it seems that Neanderthals may have smoked fish in order to preserve them, and also ate shellfish.

However, Neanderthals are known for hunting large game - we know this from a few bits of evidence:

- Neanderthals have a lot of injuries consistent with stuntmen today, suggesting that they were frequently hunting dangerous prey, using up close hunting techniques.
- Neanderthals made and hafted spear points onto wooden shafts, making stone-tipped spears with razor sharp Levallois points.
- Neanderthal campsites are always associated with bones that have been butchered and stripped of meat with stone tools. Elk, ibex, auroch (the ancestor of the cow) and wild boars were favourites.
- Neanderthals had a bone density that suggests they ate more meat than we do today. This makes sense, since they needed more calories to get through a day.

Interestingly, Neanderthals had to cook their food, like we do. Their teeth and jaws - just like ours - were smaller than those of more primitive human ancestors. They didn't have mouths designed for raw food, and so they cooked food on fires to soften it, sterilize it, and bring out nutrients.

It is considered likely that Neanderthals must have invented some sort of soup - one elderly Neanderthal (the old man of Shanidar) didn't have teeth to eat with, and could only have subsisted on some sort of soup.

Answer 3

The Neanderthals were skilled hunters of large game such as bison or deer, and the animal remains recovered from their sites suggest that they had a diet rich in cooked and raw meat. It is likely that their clothing was made from the discarded animal skins. They were expert flint workers, making a wide range of tools, and they buried their dead in deliberate graves.