成人快手

Scientists have found what could be evidence of complex cooking and plant based eating among Neanderthals, by analysing the oldest charred cooked food remains ever found.

Ancient hunter gatherers were thought to be largely meat eaters, but perhaps we need a re-think.

The remains, approximately 70,000 years old, found in Shanidar caves 500 miles from Baghdad, Iraq, hint to Neanderthals making something akin to our modern day flatbread. This suggests there was a complexity to their cooking practices, not previously acknowledged in academic literature.

Dr Ceren Kabuckcu is an archaeobotanist at the University of Liverpool and took the lead on the study:

"We came across a number of fragments that have wild pulses in them...ancestors of things like the pea we eat today...they were often being made in mixtures and using multiple steps."

(Photo: Microscopic image of pulse-rich food from the Shanidar Caves. Credit: Ceren Kabukcu/University of Liverpool/PA Wire)