We may have to rethink the image of our ancestors as meat-obsessed carnivores. It turns out that they were more like your mother, likely forcing their children to down overcooked vegetables.
Time reports that a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that Neanderthals ate grains and vegetables. And that they cooked those ingredients alongside meat on an open fire.
While the Neanderthals may have eaten vegetables, they weren't advanced enough to floss. The other bane of your childhood is the reason that researchers may have uncovered new facts about the eating habits of cavemen:
Researchers found grains from numerous plants, including a type of wild grass, as well as traces of roots and tubers, trapped in plaque buildup on fossilized Neanderthal teeth unearthed in Northern Europe and Iraq.The discovery is important because it challenges the theory that an overreliance on meat is the reason that Neanderthals died out. This is also bad news for the caveman diet, a goofy hipster-fueled fad that believes the secret to good health is having a meat locker in your one-bedroom, railroad apartment. Because apparently even cavemen understood that people can't live on meat alone.
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