Oldest ever leftovers hint at Neanderthal food culture

Charred remnants of what appears to be the world’s oldest cooked meal ever found have been unearthed in a cave complex in northern Iraq.

Chris Hunt, a professor of cultural paleoecology at Liverpool John Moores University, and his colleagues recovered the food remnants from the Shanidar Cave site, a Neanderthal dwelling 800km north of Baghdad thought to be about 70,000 years old. Their research, published in Antiquity, adds to mounting evidence of plant consumption by early modern humans and Neanderthals, in addition to meat.