NEANDERTHALS may have feasted on maggot-infested meat as a core part of their diet, according to a new study.
But the pungent delicacy was more than simply “starvation rations”, said Melanie Beasley, assistant professor of anthropology at Purdue University, Indiana.
A number of Indigenous communities have viewedputrefied - or fermented - meat as highly desirable.
It is easier to digest, meaning the body can better and more quickly absorb nutrients without cooking.
Experts have long known that Neanderthals - our extinct human ancestor - were omnivores, eating meat and vegetables like most modern people.
But chemical signatures found in Neanderthal remains suggest they ate as much meat as lions.
Analysis of their bones found too much nitrogen than what a classic omnivore would have.
But hominins simply cannot tolerate eating the high levels of protein that large predators can.
When humans eat as much protein as Earth’s apex predators - or hypercarnivores - over long periods of time, without consuming enough other nutrients they can develop protein poisoning.
Also known as “rabbit starvation”, protein poisoning can lead to malnutrition and death.
Research from Beasley and her team suggests that Neanderthals had a hidden delicacy: maggots.
Similar to the historical diets of some indigenous communities, Neanderthals too may have dined on decaying meat.
It is this that would have boosted their internal nitrogen levels to hypercarnivore-levels, according to the study.
“We suspected that maggots could have been a different potential source of enriched nitrogen-15 in the Neanderthal diet,” Beasley explained in a recent article published in The Conversation .
“Maggots, whichare fly larvae, can be a fat-rich source of food.
“They are unavoidable after you kill another animal, easily collectible in large numbers and nutritionally beneficial.“
Beasley and her colleagues used data from a forensic anthropology project focused on how nitrogen might help estimate time since death to investigate the possibility.
“I had originally collected modernmuscle tissuesamples andassociated maggotsat the Forensic Anthropology Center at University of Tennessee, Knoxville, to understand how nitrogen values change during decomposition after death,” she said.
“While the data can assist modern forensic death investigations, in our current study we repurposed it to test a very different hypothesis.
“We found that stable nitrogen isotope values increase modestly as muscle tissue decomposes, ranging from -0.6 permil to 7.7 permil.”
The researchers found that maggots found in dried, frozen or cached animal foods would have inflated the nitrogen levels in ancient humans during the Late Pleistocene era.
“Neanderthals’ cultural practices, similar to those of Indigenous peoples, might be the answer to the mystery of their high [nitrogen-15] values.
“Ancient hominins were butchering, storing, preserving, cooking and cultivating a variety of items.
“All these practices enriched their paleo menu with foods in forms that nonhominin carnivores do not consume.
“Research shows that [nitrogen-15] values are higher forcooked foods, putrid muscle tissue fromterrestrialandaquatic species, and,with our study, for fly larvae feeding on decaying tissue.“
Although maggots may not solely explain the lion-like nitrogen levels in Neanderthals, according to the researchers.
It is still unclear how many maggots an ancient human would need to eat to account for so much nitrogen.
More research is needed on changes in nitrogen-15 values of foods processed, stored and cooked following Indigenous traditional practices to “help us better understand the dietary practices of our ancient relatives,” said Beasley.
