Sneak Peek Into Neanderthal Cooking Habits Reveals They Were Just As Intelligent As Homo Sapiens

[Judi Lynn]

PUBLISHED
Yesterday

Our hominin cousins mastered fire and used it to cook food, just as we did millennia later.

MADDY CHAPMAN
Copy Editor and Staff Writer

Neanderthals were just as intelligent as Homo sapiens – that’s the conclusion of research that, based on more than 20 years worth of excavations, demonstrates our ancient cousins knew how to control fire and used it to cook food.

It’s perhaps not that surprising given what we already know about the extinct hominins. In the last few weeks alone we’ve found out that they hunted lions and used their pelts, and that they made their own glue.

"This [new finding] confirms our observations and theories from previous studies,” Diego Angelucci, an archaeologist at the University of Trento and co-author of the study, said in a statement.

"Neanderthals were capable of symbolic thought, could create artistic objects, knew how to decorate their bodies using personal ornaments, and had an extremely varied diet. Add to that that, based on our findings, we can say with certainty that they habitually ate cooked food. This ability confirms that they were as skilled as the Homo sapiens who lived millennia later."

More:
https://www.iflscience.com/sneak-peek-into-neanderthal-cooking-habits-reveals-they-were-just-as-intelligent-as-homo-sapiens-71121