Neanderthal teeth offer telling details on diet and medicine

versions of penicillin and aspirin to help ease his pain.

The dental plaque provides a lifelong record of what went in the Neanderthals’ mouths and the bacteria in their guts, said study co-author Alan Cooper, director of the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA in Adelaide.

While past studies showed varied Neanderthal diets, genetic testing allowed researchers to say what kind of meat or mushrooms they ate, Cooper said. The 42,000-year-old Belgian Neanderthal’s menu of sheep and woolly rhino reflected what roamed in the plains around the Neander- thal’s home, he said. The research is in Wednesday’s journal Nature .

“I do wonder what rhino tastes like,” said study lead author Laura Weyrich, a paleo microbiologist at the University of Adelaide. “I’m not a big fan of sheep. I think I’ll take the rhino.”

There were no signs of meat in the diet of the two 50,000-year-old Spanish Neanderthals, but calling them vegetarians would be a stretch, Cooper said. Their own bones showed that they were eaten by cannibals.

The two specimens in Spain were a female adult and a teenage male, who wasn’t a son or brother but may have been some other relative according to their DNA, Weyrich said.

The young male was obviously sick, with an infected mouth and other injuries, she said. But on his teeth — and only his — were two residues. One was from the poplar tree where doctors would later get a key ingredient in aspirin and the other was from mold that had a version of the antibiotic penicillin.

The research gives direct evidence for what was already suspected about their diverse diets and use of medicine, said University of Colorado Museum’s Paola Villa, who wasn’t part of the study.