Scientists found 70,000-year-old remnants of a neanderthal meal in a cave in Iraq. They ran it through a scanning electron microscope. It was a bean burger....
In 2022 a team from the University of Liverpool published a peer-reviewed study in the journal Antiquity documenting their analysis of charred food remains from Shanidar Cave in Iraqi Kurdistan, one of the most significant Neanderthal archaeological sites in the world. The cave is already famous for the Shanidar IV burial, a Neanderthal skeleton discovered surrounded by flowers, the first documented evidence of Neanderthal ritual burial. What the 2022 study found in the same cave's ashes was something nobody expected. Evidence of complex, multi-ingredient, multi-step cooking by Neanderthals 70,000 years ago. Wild lentils, wild peas, wild grass seeds, wild mustard and wild pistachio, soaked to remove bitter outer husks, ground together, combined with water, formed into cakes and cooked over fire. As Professor Chris Hunt, coordinator of the excavation, told the Guardian: our findings are the first real indication of complex cooking, and thus of food culture, among Neanderthals.
The myth of the strictly meat-eating caveman is not accurate and the archaeological evidence has been dismantling it for decades. Neanderthals were primarily hunters, the main species at Shanidar was the agile mountain ibex which required genuine skill to catch, and isotope analysis of Neanderthal bone shows a diet heavily weighted toward animal protein. But they were also gathering, processing and deliberately combining plant foods in ways that demonstrate cognitive planning and accumulated generational knowledge about how to make food more digestible and more palatable. They were soaking pulses to reduce bitterness. They were grinding seeds to remove husks. They were combining multiple ingredients deliberately. They were cooking. The Shanidar Cave Project noted one additional detail that I find genuinely wonderful. The Neanderthals did not remove all the bitter parts from the pulses, which might mean they actually liked the bitter taste. A 70,000 year old flavour preference, preserved in ash.
I made the recipe. Fava beans, lentils, wheat berries, almonds, pistachios and mustard seeds, soaked overnight, crushed together, formed into small round cakes and grilled over fire exactly as the evidence documents. No salt. No oil. No seasoning of any kind beyond what the 70,000 year old charred remains show. I rated it 1.3 out of 10. If I were a Neanderthal in the Zagros Mountains with a freshly killed ibex roasting over the fire nearby, I would not be reaching for the bean cake. But the story of what those burned remnants reveal about Neanderthal intelligence and food culture is one of the most extraordinary things I have covered for this channel. Full history sourced directly from the peer-reviewed Antiquity study and the Shanidar Cave Project, and the complete recipe, on the blog now. Link in bio.
https://eatshistory.com/eating-like-a-neanderthal-a-70000-year-old-bean-burger/