Neanderthal Man

Prior to July, 1995 ZetaTalk stated that Neanderthal Man had died out, been replaced actually, during mankind's genetic engineering, due to digestive system problems - an inability to eat with ease what the Earth provided. On June 12, 2000 the Associated Press confirmed this!

Study suggests Neanderthals ate meat and little else
By Paul Recer, Associated Press, June 12, 2000

If a Neanderthal walked into a hamburger joint today, he probably would order a double burger. And hold the bun, the lettuce, tomato and onion. A new study of 28,000-year-old Neanderthal bones suggests the ancient hominid ate meat, lots of it, and very little else. "Their diet was about 90 percent meat," said Paul B. Pettitt of Oxford University in England, co-author of a study appearing Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "This means they were efficient hunters and not just scavengers as some have suggested." A life style so centered on meat, said Pettitt, means that the lowbrowed, hairy Neanderthal was able to organize complex hunts that brought down big and dangerous game. "This study suggests that the difference between Neanderthals and modern humans was only a matter of degree," said Erik Trinkaus, a Washington University at St. Louis anthropologist and co-author of the study. "Modern humans were probably more efficient in terms of their organization, but the Neanderthals were very close."

Trinkaus said the new study does not settle that debate, but it does show the Neanderthal was not just simple, stupid and brutish. "This study implies a much higher degree of social organization complexity than is frequently attributed to the Neanderthals," said Trinkaus. "They were much more equal to modern humans in many ways." One big difference, though, was food choices. Studies of bones from the early modern humans in Europe suggest they had a more varied diet, eating smaller animals, such as rabbits, and lots of fish - up to 30 percent of their diet. But for the Neanderthal, it was meat, meat and more meat. Europe of 28,000 years ago was enjoying a warm period between two extremes of the ice age, Pettitt said. The plains of Europe were grassy and probably included vast herds of animals, which he calls "lawn mowers." As a result, the Neanderthal hunter preyed on mammoth, horse, deer, woolly rhino and other large animals. When conditions changed and fewer of these animals were available, the Neanderthal may have had a more difficult time adjusting than did the competing humans who lived on a more varied diet, said Pettitt.The researchers probed the diet of the Neanderthal by measuring the isotopic ratios of nitrogen in skulls and jawbones recovered from a cave in Croatia.