Did the Ne­an­derthals Eat Mush­rooms?

by Elio

A re­cent re­port in Na­ture car­ries the tan­ta­liz­ing ti­tle "Ne­an­derthal be­hav­iour, diet, and dis­ease in­ferred from an­cient DNA in den­tal cal­cu­lus." A con­sor­tium of some 30 au­thors from about a dozen coun­tries stud­ied the den­tal plaque of five Ne­an­derthals, two found in caves in Bel­gium, two in Spain, and one in Italy. (A good thing that these rel­a­tives of ours did not prac­tice ex­ten­sive den­tal hy­giene, which would have re­moved the ev­i­dence.) By DNA analy­sis, they con­cluded that the re­la­tives of ours that resided in the Bel­gian cave were steppe-dwellers and meat eaters, liv­ing mainly on wholly rhi­noc­eros and wild sheep. By con­trast, the ones from the Span­ish cave lived in forests, ate no meat and sub­sisted on mush­rooms, pine nuts, and moss. It turns out that mush­rooms re­mains were found in sev­eral of these spec­i­mens. Here are the re­sults:

Fig­ure. A The fos­sil up­per jaw of a young Ne­an­der­thal male. Source: Pa­le­oan­thro­pol­ogy Group MN­C­N‑CSIC; B Co­prinop­sis cinerea. Source. C Schi­zo­phyl­lum com­mune. Source

In the Bel­gian spec­i­mens, the re­searchers found DNA of Co­prinop­sis cinerea (here called 'gray shag'), in the Spa­nish one, Schizo­phyl­lum com­mune (split gill), each mak­ing up about 2.5 to 3.5 per­cent of the to­tal DNA found in the spec­i­mens of plaque. To a present-day gas­tromy­col­o­gist, these seem to be some­what strange choices. Given that larger and more tasty spec­i­mens must have been avai­lable, why did they choose these rel­a­tively small and not es­pe­cially tooth­some ones? Also, C. cinerea, be­ing inky caps, don't keep well.

I hate to be a spoil­sport but I con­fess to have some doubts. S. com­mune and species of Co­pri­nus have been found to be hu­man pathogens and may con­ceiv­ably have trav­eled to the teeth from in­side the bo­dy. Of course, the al­ter­na­tive, that our early rel­a­tives were my­cophag­ists has much greater ap­peal. If cor­rob­o­rated, it would mean that the hu­man fam­ily has used mush­rooms for over 100,000 years.

The pa­per in­cludes some other chal­leng­ing find­ings, such as signs of den­tal dis­ease and per­haps at­tempt to cure it. It seems likely that fur­ther work will shed more light on these fas­ci­nat­ing ques­tions.

 

Lis­ten to a dis­cus­sion of the Ne­an­derthal diet by Vin­cent, Elio, and Michael on This Week in Mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy episode #148.