Did Neanderthals have family recipes? A new study suggests that two groups of Neanderthals living in the caves of Amud and Kebara in northern Israel butchered their food in strikingly different ways, despite living close by and using similar tools and resources. Scientists think they might have been passing down different food preparation practices.

“The subtle differences in cut-mark patterns between Amud and Kebara may reflect local traditions of animal carcass processing,” said Anaëlle Jallon, PhD candidate at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and lead author of the article in Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology. “Even though Neanderthals at these two sites shared similar living conditions and faced comparable challenges, they seem to have developed distinct butchery strategies, possibly passed down through social learning and cultural traditions.

“These two sites give us a unique opportunity to explore whether Neanderthal butchery techniques were standardized,” explained Jallon. “If butchery techniques varied between sites or time periods, this would imply that factors such as cultural traditions, cooking preferences, or social organization influenced even subsistence-related activities such as butchering.”

Written in the bones

Amud and Kebara are close to each other: only 70 kilometers apart. Neanderthals occupied both caves during the winters between 50 and 60,000 years ago, leaving behind burials, stone tools, hearths, and food remains. Both groups used the same flint tools and relied on the same prey for their diet — mostly gazelles and fallow deer. But there are some subtle differences between the two. The Neanderthals living at Kebara seem to have hunted more large prey than those at Amud, and they also seem to have carried more large kills home to butcher them in the cave rather than at the site of the kill.

At Amud, 40% of the animal bones are burned and most are fragmented. This could be caused by deliberate actions like cooking or by later accidental damage. At Kebara, 9% of the bones are burned, but less fragmented, and are thought to have been cooked. The bones at Amud also seem to have undergone less carnivore damage than those found at Kebara.

To investigate the differences between food preparation at Kebara and at Amud, the scientists selected a sample of cut-marked bones from contemporaneous layers at the two sites. They examined these macroscopically and microscopically, recording the cut-marks’ different characteristics. Similar patterns of cut-marks might suggest there were no differences in butchery practices, while different patterns might indicate distinct cultural traditions.

The cut-marks were clear and intact, largely unaffected by later damage caused by carnivores or the drying out of the bones. The profiles, angles, and surface widths of these cuts were similar, likely due to the two groups’ similar toolkits. However, the cut-marks found at Amud were more densely packed and less linear in shape than those at Kebara.

Cooking from scratch

The researchers considered several possible explanations for this pattern. It could have been driven by the demands of butchering different prey species or different types of bones — most of the bones at Amud, but not Kebara, are long bones — but when they only looked at the long bones of small ungulates found at both Amud and Kebara, the same differences showed up in the data. Experimental archaeology also suggests this pattern couldn’t be accounted for by less skilled butchers or by butchering more intensively to get as much food as possible. The different patterns of cut-marks are best explained by deliberate butchery choices made by each group.

One possible explanation is that the Neanderthals at Amud were treating meat differently before butchering it: possibly drying their meat or letting it decompose, like modern-day butchers hanging meat before cooking. Decaying meat is harder to process, which would account for the greater intensity and less linear form of the cut-marks. A second possibility is that different group organization — for example, the number of butchers who worked on a given kill — in the two communities of Neanderthals played a role.

However, more research will be needed to investigate these possibilities.

“There are some limitations to consider,” said Jallon. “The bone fragments are sometimes too small to provide a complete picture of the butchery marks left on the carcass. While we have made efforts to correct for biases caused by fragmentation, this may limit our ability to fully interpret the data. Future studies, including more experimental work and comparative analyses, will be crucial for addressing these uncertainties — and maybe one day reconstructing Neanderthals’ recipes.”

A new study from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem reveals that Neanderthals living in two nearby caves in northern Israel — butchered their food in noticeably different ways. Despite using the same tools and hunting the same prey, groups in Amud and Kebara caves left behind distinct patterns of cut-marks on animal bones, suggesting that food preparation techniques may have been culturally specific and passed down through generations. These differences cannot be explained by tool type, skill, or available resources, and may reflect practices such as drying or aging meat before butchering. The findings provide rare insight into the social and cultural complexity of Neanderthal communities.

Neanderthals lived in the nearby caves of Amud and Kebara between 50 and 60,000 years ago, using the same tools and hunting the same prey. But due to the research lead by Anaelle Jallon from the Institute of Archeology (supervisors Rivka Rabinovich and Erella Hovers) with colleagues from the Natural History Museum of London, Lucille Crete and Silvia Bello, studying the cutmarks on the remains of their prey have found that the two groups seem to have butchered their food in visibly different ways, which can’t be explained by the skill of the butchers or the resources or tools used at each site. These differences could represent distinct cultural food practices, such as drying meat before butchering it.

Did Neanderthals have family recipes? A new study suggests that two groups of Neanderthals living in the caves of Amud and Kebara in northern Israel butchered their food in strikingly different ways, despite living close by and using similar tools and resources. Scientists think they might have been passing down different food preparation practices.

“The subtle differences in cut-mark patterns between Amud and Kebara may reflect local traditions of animal carcass processing,” said Anaëlle Jallon, PhD candidate at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and lead author of the article in Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology. “Even though Neanderthals at these two sites shared similar living conditions and faced comparable challenges, they seem to have developed distinct butchery strategies, possibly passed down through social learning and cultural traditions.

“These two sites give us a unique opportunity to explore whether Neanderthal butchery techniques were standardized,” explained Jallon. “If butchery techniques varied between sites or time periods, this would imply that factors such as cultural traditions, cooking preferences, or social organization influenced even subsistence-related activities such as butchering.”

Written in the bones

Amud and Kebara are close to each other: only 70 kilometers apart. Neanderthals occupied both caves during the winters between 50 and 60,000 years ago, leaving behind burials, stone tools, hearths, and food remains. Both groups used the same flint tools and relied on the same prey for their diet — mostly gazelles and fallow deer. But there are some subtle differences between the two. The Neanderthals living at Kebara seem to have hunted more large prey than those at Amud, and they also seem to have carried more large kills home to butcher them in the cave rather than at the site of the kill.

At Amud, 40% of the animal bones are burned and most are fragmented. This could be caused by deliberate actions like cooking or by later accidental damage. At Kebara, 9% of the bones are burned, but less fragmented, and are thought to have been cooked. The bones at Amud also seem to have undergone less carnivore damage than those found at Kebara.

To investigate the differences between food preparation at Kebara and at Amud, the scientists selected a sample of cut-marked bones from contemporaneous layers at the two sites. They examined these macroscopically and microscopically, recording the cut-marks’ different characteristics. Similar patterns of cut-marks might suggest there were no differences in butchery practices, while different patterns might indicate distinct cultural traditions.

The cut-marks were clear and intact, largely unaffected by later damage caused by carnivores or the drying out of the bones. The profiles, angles, and surface widths of these cuts were similar, likely due to the two groups’ similar toolkits. However, the cut-marks found at Amud were more densely packed and less linear in shape than those at Kebara.

Cooking from scratch

The researchers considered several possible explanations for this pattern. It could have been driven by the demands of butchering different prey species or different types of bones — most of the bones at Amud, but not Kebara, are long bones — but when they only looked at the long bones of small ungulates found at both Amud and Kebara, the same differences showed up in the data. Experimental archaeology also suggests this pattern couldn’t be accounted for by less skilled butchers or by butchering more intensively to get as much food as possible. The different patterns of cut-marks are best explained by deliberate butchery choices made by each group.

One possible explanation is that the Neanderthals at Amud were treating meat differently before butchering it: possibly drying their meat or letting it decompose, like modern-day butchers hanging meat before cooking. Decaying meat is harder to process, which would account for the greater intensity and less linear form of the cut-marks. A second possibility is that different group organization — for example, the number of butchers who worked on a given kill — in the two communities of Neanderthals played a role.

However, more research will be needed to investigate these possibilities.

“There are some limitations to consider,” said Jallon. “The bone fragments are sometimes too small to provide a complete picture of the butchery marks left on the carcass. While we have made efforts to correct for biases caused by fragmentation, this may limit our ability to fully interpret the data. Future studies, including more experimental work and comparative analyses, will be crucial for addressing these uncertainties — and maybe one day reconstructing Neanderthals’ recipes.”

But pinning down “regular use” is a hard task. One of the earliest sites with evidence of persistent fire use is Qesem Cave in Israel, which hominins started using about 400,000 years ago. “The cave is full of wood ash,” says Ran Barkai, an archaeologist at Tel Aviv University in Israel. “We have tons of burned bones and burned flint items.” He believes the inhabitants were capable of lighting fires, though he does not yet have direct archaeological evidence of that. But even at Qesem, it’s hard to be sure if the cave users gathered around fires often, or only harvested a rare one once a century, notes Sandgathe; dating methods simply aren’t precise enough to tell.

Just because one culture tended, or even lit, fire, doesn’t mean the concept immediately caught on and warmed humankind forevermore. It’s possible that fire tending happened in fits and starts before it was cemented in human habits.

Sandgathe and his collaborator, archaeologist Harold Dibble of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, think that is what happened with Neanderthals who inhabited sites the pair have excavated in France, which date to between 100,000 and 40,000 years old. They found some layers of sediment containing ash and burned tools and bone, and some layers without. Oddly, it’s the more recent, coldest time periods when fire seems to be absent. They hypothesize that Neanderthals couldn’t make fire and that they had better access to it during warm periods when lightning strikes were frequent.

But their hypothesis begs the question: If Neanderthals couldn’t start fires, how did they survive the chill? “That’s a tough one,” admits Sandgathe. “Seventy-five thousand years ago, it was really bloody cold.” The average temperature was probably about 5 to 10 degrees Celsius colder than today, he says. Maybe the Neanderthals fashioned warm clothing, he muses, or perhaps they were just rather hairy.

Others doubt that Neanderthals’ fire usage really died away. “I’m pretty sure they knew how to make it,” says Hlubik. Another explanation for Sandgathe and Dibble’s findings, she speculates, is that Neanderthals might have had to rely on animal dung, instead of wood, for fuel during cold and relatively treeless periods. Perhaps they wanted to keep the stinky fumes of fires for cooking or toolmaking away from their home caves, and so they lit those fires farther afield—where the evidence more easily washed away, or hasn’t yet been found.

Andrew Sorensen, a Ph.D. student in archaeology at Leiden University in the Netherlands, is looking more directly at the question of whether these more recent peoples could make fire. “The only real, true way you can tell whether or not they are making it themselves is by looking for the tools they were using to make those fires,” he says.

Unfortunately, most tools for fire-starting, such as sticks to spin and create friction, are made of wood and are therefore unlikely to survive in the archaeological record. That leaves striking rocks, such as pyrite against flint, as the method Sorensen is most likely to find proof for among artifacts. There’s solid evidence, in a hand-grooved nodule of pyrite from Belgium, that some humans set fires this way around 13,000 years ago. Sorensen has been picking through rocks in museums looking for microscopic markings that might indicate the stones were used to strike fires, perhaps only once or twice before being discarded. He says he has examined several such tools from Neanderthals who inhabited southwest France about 50,000 years ago.

“Neanderthals were almost certainly making fire during the last glacial period,” says Sorensen, referring to a time about 100,000 to 35,000 years ago.

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Regardless of when exactly humankind managed to make fire a regular presence in their lives, scientists agree it was a turning point in human evolution. Eventually, humankind hit a point of no return when fire became essential. Modern humans can’t do without it, whether to burn gasoline in our engines, warm our nearly hairless bodies, or cook porridge or steak.

Cooking, in particular, is widely seen as a crucial adaptation. It makes both meat and vegetables easier to chew, and frees up calories for digestion. The evolutionary biologist Richard Wrangham, at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has argued that cooking fires changed the course of human evolution. As evidence of our need for the flames, he points to research showing that modern women who follow an all or mostly raw food diet often don’t menstruate—something that’s clearly needed for species propagation.