A 70,000-Year-Old Plant-Based Meal and the Myth of the “Paleo” Carnivorous Caveman

Archaeological evidence from Shanidar Cave and other sites shows that Neanderthals consumed and processed pulses, grasses, starch-rich plants, nuts, and other plant foods — complicating the popular image of the exclusively carnivorous “caveman.”

The popular image of the Neanderthal with flesh torn between his teeth, and slowly rotting in his stomach is a remarkably persistent one. Fad diets and YouTube “experts” and self-proclaimed “nutritionalists” invoke the fantasy of Euro-Neanderthal carnivores, covered in fur from their proud kills (never scavenged — heavens no!); massive calloused hands holding primitive stone-tipped spear; somehow miraculously having mastered fire — all for the ultirior motive of scarfing down an enormous piece of meat.

These modern “Liver King” Trenbolone-saturated blood-thirsty “carnivore” and “Paleo” diet trends have eagerly adopted — and marketed — that image, often treating hominid prehistory as evidence that homosapien-sapien human beings are naturally adapted to diets dominated almost exclusively by animal foods. The archaeological record, however, is considerably more interesting, though also less condusive to marketing to mainstream dietary confirmation bias.

In finds at the Shanidar Cave in the Zagros Mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan, archaeologists have recovered direct physical evidence that Neanderthals living roughly 70,000 years ago were deliberately preparing and cooking nothing short of plant foods — not meals of animal flesh.

A microscopic analysis of carbonized food remains from the site was recently published by Ceren Kabukcu and colleagues in Antiquity. This double-blind, peer-reviewed study identified charred food fragment from a Mousterian level associated with Neanderthals. The fragment contained pieces of pulse seed and seed coat together with cells characteristic of grasses.¹ This is not merely evidence that an occasional seed fell into a hearth otherwise boiling flesh in its own blood and fat. It is, rather, part of a larger archaeobotanical record showing that Palaeolithic peoples selected, processed, combined, and cooked plant ingredients as staples and even the foundation of their diet — “evil” brain-nurishing carbs not withstanding!

The frequently used description of this discovery, by several vegan and vegetarian outlets, as a 70,000-year-old “bean burger” is playful rather than literal. Archaeologists certainly did not excavate a perfectly preserved patty with an ingredient list attached. Nor does the Neanderthal fragment itself establish the precise modern recipe sometimes reconstructed from it for academically inappropriate dietarily-ideological purposes.

The later Upper Palaeolithic layers at Shanidar yielded more varied compound plant-food remains, including crushed pulses such as Lathyrus and Pisum, wild mustard, and probable Pistacia tissue. The older Mousterian specimen is more modest but, in some respects, more significant: identifiable pulse and grass material had already been processed into food during Neanderthal occupation.¹

That distinction, however, actually strengthens the pro-veganism argument. There is no need to exaggerate the evidence. What survives is already enough to overturn the cartoon version of the “caveman diet.”

This was not the first evidence of Neanderthal plant consumption. More than a decade before the Shanidar food fragments were published, Amanda Henry, Alison Brooks, and Dolores Piperno examined mineralized dental calculus from Neanderthals at Shanidar Cave in Iraq and Spy Cave in Belgium. Internet influences and YouTube “health” pundits and psuedo-historians curiously ignored these findings as well.

Henry, Brooks and Piperno’s collective analysis recovered starch grains and phytoliths representing a surprisingly diverse primarily plant diet, including grass seeds, legumes, date palm, underground storage organs, and other plant foods. Several starch grains showed alterations consistent with cooking.² The assumption that prehistorical cooking was employed to better fascilitate flesh consumption and digestion was, and continues to be, contradicted at every turn.

In other words, Neanderthals were not merely nibbling berries when hunting failed. They were consuming starch-rich, high-carbohydrate foods, gathering seasonally available plants, and investing considerable labor in their preparation. Henry and colleagues explicitly observed that several of these foods would have required substantial processing before eating.² This indicates a diet based on such foods, rather than utilizing as a last ditch effort to avoid starvation.

The finding is especially important because the archaeological record is replete with confirmation bias against plants. This is hardly surprising. If researchers and pundits alike are wedded to the ease and normalcy of a flesh-based diet in the Modern West, then this bias will naturally color and flavor their research methods, limitations and conclusions alike.

But why aren’t there a preponderance of such archeological finds associated with the Neanderthal? The limited planet-based findings at Neanderthal sites is far from an indication of their sparse consumption. Bones, teeth, and stone tools can survive for tens of thousands of years under conditions in which leaves, fruits, roots, tubers, cooked grains, and legumes disappear almost completely. Dental calculus, microscopic residues, phytoliths, starch grains, and exceptionally preserved carbonized food therefore reveal behaviors that traditional faunal archaeology could easily miss. Analyses of Neanderthal dental wear likewise indicate considerable ecological variation in diet, with populations in more temperate environments showing evidence of broader food exploitation.³

This matters when interpreting another frequently cited line of evidence: stable-isotope analysis. Isotopic studies have indeed demonstrated that a number of European Neanderthals obtained much of their dietary protein from large terrestrial herbivores. But Black Hebrew Israelite street corner cult polemic notwithstanding, Neanderthals were hardly limited to European environs.

Contrary to popular assumptions of Internet “common knowledge” Michael Richards and Erik Trinkaus found Neanderthal collagen isotope values consistent with high trophic-level consumption and concluded that large herbivores supplied most or all of the protein represented by those samples.⁴

That finding should not be discarded, but must be contextualized to both the frigid regions of Europe — where we similarly find cavern sites amounting to nothing short of toddler butcher shops. There is no question that European Neanderthals consumed not only non-human animal flesh, but also that of their own species. This is hardly a moral barometer for human dietary modeling.

While we must acknowledge these European finds — including the most barbaric and cannibalistic of them — the assertion that “most dietary protein came from animals” is not synonymous with “most calories came from animals,” and still less with “Neanderthals ate little or no meaningful quantities of plant foods.”

The distinction is fundamental. Bone-collagen carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis is particularly informative about the sources of dietary protein. Richards and Trinkaus themselves described the method in precisely those terms.⁴ Henry and colleagues subsequently emphasized that Neanderthal consumption of starchy plants does not conflict with the nitrogen-isotope evidence because such isotope measurements principally track meat and protein-rich foods rather than providing a complete inventory of carbohydrate consumption.²

The scientific conclusion drawn from the full array of data — from all Neanderthal regions — indicate a population that therefore not only obtained substantial protein from hunted animals, but also simultaneously consumed significant quantities of carbohydrate-rich roots, grasses, seeds, fruits, and other plant foods… just like their non-European Neanderthal counterparts.

This is not a reach. The archaeological evidence demonstrates exactly this combination in the reconstructed European Neanderthal diet. It also demonstrates further that there was no single, monolythic “Neanderthal diet.” Neanderthals in Europe or regions of the extreme North globally — during past ice ages, no less — were quite different than those found in warmer environs. This nuance, however, is not great for marketing influencer-branded supplements.

A 2017 Nature study led by Laura Weyrich extracted ancient DNA from Neanderthal dental calculus and found striking ecological variation. At Spy Cave in Belgium, evidence was consistent with a heavily meat-based diet that included rhinoceros and wild sheep. At El Sidrón in forested northern Spain, however, the researchers detected absolutely no meat in the dietary DNA they recovered. What they found instead was conclusively identified as plant-associated foods — including pine nuts and mushrooms.⁵ Absence of detected meat in those particular specimens cannot establish pure vegetarianism, but the contrast makes a broader point unavoidable: Neanderthal subsistence varied with environment — and in some cases there was zero evidence for a diet with any flesh foods whatsoever.

The bandwagonesqe phrase “the Neanderthal diet” is therefore about as scientifically useful as “the human diet.” Arctic peoples, Mediterranean foragers, tropical hunter-gatherers, agriculturalists, pastoralists, and industrial populations have never eaten identically. There is no meaningful reason to impose such uniformity on another geographically widespread human population that occupied Eurasia across dramatically different climates.

Plants necessarily a nutritionally insignificant fallback. Pulses are unusually valuable foods because they combine carbohydrate with substantial protein, while nuts and seeds contribute dense sources of energy and fat. Wild grasses and underground storage organs provide additional carbohydrate energy. Processing techniques such as soaking, pounding, grinding, and heating greatly increase the usefulness of such resources. Kabukcu and colleagues concluded from the broader Palaeolithic record of Shanidar and Franchthi that sophisticated plant processing had deep roots and that bitter or astringent plants were deliberately incorporated into ancient cuisines rather than simply tolerated during periods of starvation.¹

That word — cuisine — is essential.

The evidence increasingly describes not merely nutritional intake but a plant-based food culture — selection, preparation, texture, flavor, combination, and learned processing techniques. The Shanidar remains suggest knowledge passed between people about which seeds were edible, which needed processing, and how they could be transformed using water, pounding, and heat.

The old oppositional dichotomy between the “intelligent” Neanderthal hunter and the mindless, malnourished Australopithecal gatherer becomes impossible to academically sustain once plant-food preparation itself is recognized as technological knowledge.⁴

This is where the evidence becomes particularly relevant to modern veganism. Veganism does not require a mythical tribe of prehistoric vegans in order to be rational. Ancestral behavior is not an ethical commandment. Neanderthals also lived without antibiotics, eyeglasses, sanitation systems, modern agriculture, or cardiovascular medicine; nobody seriously argues that contemporary people must imitate every Pleistocene behavior because it is “natural.”

In philosophical terms of argumentative fallacious reasoning, such a proposition is termed Appeal to Nature Fallacy. If we are to argue that what happens “naturally” — that is, prehistorically — is somehow the signpost for human ethics, then we must also conclude the same for the European cannibalism of rival-communities toddler flesh. If you wish to make that argument for the purposes of Edgelordism then that is fine, but you are simply not part of a serious conversation in which “grown folks” are engaging in analysis and discussion of empirical data.

The fact we are left with at the end of the day is that Neanderthals were consuming cooked starches. They were eating legumes. They were processing grass seeds. Some were consuming dates, nuts, mushrooms, and other plants and funguses. These findings now come from multiple independent methods, including dental calculus microfossils, carbonized food residues, dental wear, and ancient DNA. There can no longer be any serious debate on these matters.¹ ² ³ ⁵

Finally, the modern ecological equation is radically different from the Pleistocene one. Contemporary humanity is not a sparse population of hunter-gatherers harvesting wild animals from intact ecosystems. More than eight billion humans are supported by an industrial agricultural system. In a global analysis published in Nature Food, Xiaoming Xu and colleagues estimated that production of animal-based foods, including livestock feed, accounted for approximately 57 percent of food-production greenhouse-gas emissions, compared with approximately 29 percent from plant-based foods; the remainder came from other uses.⁶ The ethical and environmental problem confronting contemporary society is consequently not whether a Neanderthal occasionally killed an ibex. It is how billions of people should organize food production under twenty-first-century ecological conditions.

The 70,000-year-old Shanidar meal therefore deserves a different place in discussions of diet. It should not be transformed into an imagined fantasy of purely vegan Neanderthals. The archaeology says something more useful. Plant foods were not a recent agricultural corruption of a pristine carnivorous existence. Long before farming, supermarkets, nutritional science, or the 19ᵗʰ century word “vegan” existed, people were gathering plants, processing pulses, cooking starches, combining ingredients, and transmitting culinary knowledge.

The real prehistoric diet was not a modern steakhouse menu — and just in case you needed the reminder — the “Liver King” physique is Tren-based, not the result of choking down uncooked organs.

Notes

1. Ceren Kabukcu, Chris Hunt, Evan Hill, Emma Pomeroy, Tim Reynolds, Graeme Barker, and Eleni Asouti, “Cooking in Caves: Palaeolithic Carbonised Plant Food Remains from Franchthi and Shanidar,” Antiquity 97, no. 391 (2023): 12–28. The article was published online November 23, 2022. Its microscopic analysis identifies pounded pulses as recurring ingredients in Palaeolithic cooked plant foods; the single Mousterian Shanidar fragment contains pulse seed/seed-coat fragments and grass cells.
2. Amanda G. Henry, Alison S. Brooks, and Dolores R. Piperno, “Microfossils in Calculus Demonstrate Consumption of Plants and Cooked Foods in Neanderthal Diets (Shanidar III, Iraq; Spy I and II, Belgium),” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108, no. 2 (2011): 486–491. The study identifies grass seeds, dates, legumes, underground storage organs, and evidence of cooked plant foods, while expressly explaining why such starch consumption is compatible with nitrogen-isotope evidence.
3. Sireen El Zaatari et al., “Molar Macrowear Reveals Neanderthal Eco-Geographic Dietary Variation,” PLoS ONE 6, no. 3 (2011): e14769. The analysis argues for substantial dietary variability associated with environment and notes the preservation bias produced by the much greater archaeological visibility of animal bone relative to plant foods.
4. Michael P. Richards and Erik Trinkaus, “Isotopic Evidence for the Diets of European Neanderthals and Early Modern Humans,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106, no. 38 (2009): 16034–16039. Their isotope data indicate that the sampled European Neanderthals obtained most or all of their dietary protein from large herbivores; critically, the analytical claim concerns protein sources.
5. Laura S. Weyrich et al., “Neanderthal Behaviour, Diet, and Disease Inferred from Ancient DNA in Dental Calculus,” Nature 544 (2017): 357–361. The study found a heavily meat-associated dietary signal at Spy but no detected meat in the El Sidrón specimens, where mushroom, pine-nut, and moss-associated material was identified, demonstrating considerable ecological variation.
6. Xiaoming Xu et al., “Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Animal-Based Foods Are Twice Those of Plant-Based Foods,” Nature Food 2 (2021): 724–732. The study estimated global food-production emissions at approximately 17,318 ± 1,675 Tg CO₂-equivalent annually for circa 2010, assigning approximately 57 percent to animal-based foods, including feed, and 29 percent to plant-based foods.