New Study Shows Neanderthals Were Flour Milling as Early as 43,000 Years Ago

Reconstruction of a Neanderthal manPhoto byWikimedia

New evidence has emerged that Neanderthals and early humans were processing cereals and other wild plants into flour long before scientists had previously thought.

An Italian-led study of five ancient grindstones from around 39,000 to 43,000 years ago shows that our ancestors were milling for food during the transitional period between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens.

The study, published in Quaternary Science Reviews, found that the oldest European examples of the processing and transformation of plant products in Europe were from the Mousterian levels of the Riparo Bombrini site in northern Italy, which showed Neanderthals engaged in this practice.

The two pestles from the Protoaurignacian levels at the site showed modern humans who occupied the site less than a millennium later also engaged in the same behavior.

The grindstones come from two Paleolithic sites some 1,000 km apart on the Tyrrhenian Sea side of the peninsula: Riparo Bombrini, in the Balzi Rossi archaeological area of Liguria, and Grotta di Castelcivita, at the foot of the Alburni Massif, in Campania.

The study involved researchers from the Universities of Florence, Genoa, Ravenna, and Bologna, as well as the Cyprus Institute and Université de Montréal.

"Transforming cereals into flour is an important innovation because it allowed Paleolithic foragers to store and transport food more easily. Pushing this behavior this far back in time really changes how we think about how these highly mobile people lived" -Julien Riel-Salvatore, Chair of Anthropology Department, University of Montreal

It's fascinating to think that our ancestors were already using technology to make their lives easier so long ago. Further, the research pushes back the date of processing cereals and plants before the start of farming.