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Link to original content: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27119336
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. 2016 Apr 27;11(4):e0153277.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0153277. eCollection 2016.

Neandertal versus Modern Human Dietary Responses to Climatic Fluctuations

Sireen El Zaatari  1   2 , Frederick E Grine  3   4 , Peter S Ungar  5 , Jean-Jacques Hublin  2
Affiliations

Neandertal versus Modern Human Dietary Responses to Climatic Fluctuations

Sireen El Zaatari et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

The Neandertal lineage developed successfully throughout western Eurasia and effectively survived the harsh and severely changing environments of the alternating glacial/interglacial cycles from the middle of the Pleistocene until Marine Isotope Stage 3. Yet, towards the end of this stage, at the time of deteriorating climatic conditions that eventually led to the Last Glacial Maximum, and soon after modern humans entered western Eurasia, the Neandertals disappeared. Western Eurasia was by then exclusively occupied by modern humans. We use occlusal molar microwear texture analysis to examine aspects of diet in western Eurasian Paleolithic hominins in relation to fluctuations in food supplies that resulted from the oscillating climatic conditions of the Pleistocene. There is demonstrable evidence for differences in behavior that distinguish Upper Paleolithic humans from members of the Neandertal lineage. Specifically, whereas the Neandertals altered their diets in response to changing paleoecological conditions, the diets of Upper Paleolithic humans seem to have been less affected by slight changes in vegetation/climatic conditions but were linked to changes in their technological complexes. The results of this study also indicate differences in resource exploitation strategies between these two hominin groups. We argue that these differences in subsistence strategies, if they had already been established at the time of the first contact between these two hominin taxa, may have given modern humans an advantage over the Neandertals, and may have contributed to the persistence of our species despite habitat-related changes in food availabilities associated with climate fluctuations.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Bivariate plots of microtexture variables’ means and 1 standard deviations of Paleolithic groups.
(A) Bivariate plot of complexity and heterogeneity for the early and later Neandertal specimens each grouped by paleoecological category. (B) Bivariate plot of complexity and heterogeneity for the Upper Paleolithic specimens grouped by paleoecological category. (C) Bivariate plot of complexity and heterogeneity for the Upper Paleolithic specimens grouped by both paleoecological and technological categories. (D) Bivariate plot of complexity and textural fill volume for the Neandertals (both early and later) and earlier (Aurignacian and Gravettian) modern human specimens grouped by paleoecological category.
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Grants and funding

This study was supported by Max Planck Society, Wenner Gren Foundation through a Hunt Post-Doctoral Fellowship to SEZ (8554), the National Science Foundation to FEG and SEZ and PSU (0452155; 0315157), and the LSB Leakey Foundation to SEZ and FEG (800320). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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