Yahoo – AFP,
Mariëtte Le Roux, Pascale MOLLARD, March 8, 2017
Paris (AFP) - Nearly 50,000 years before the invention of penicillin, a young Neanderthal tormented by a dental abscess ate greenery containing a natural antibiotic and pain killer, analysis of his teeth revealed Wednesday.
Paris (AFP) - Nearly 50,000 years before the invention of penicillin, a young Neanderthal tormented by a dental abscess ate greenery containing a natural antibiotic and pain killer, analysis of his teeth revealed Wednesday.
The male,
who lived in El Sidron in what is now Spain, ate an antibiotic fungus called
Penicillium and chewed on bits of poplar tree containing salicylic acid -- the
active ingredient of modern-day aspirin, researchers said.
The
youngster's fossilised jawbone reveals the ravages of an abscess, and his
dental plaque contained the remnants of an intestinal parasite that causes
acute diarrhoea, "so clearly he was quite sick," they wrote in the
journal Nature.
"Apparently,
Neanderthals possessed a good knowledge of medicinal plants and their various
anti-inflammatory and pain-relieving properties, and seem to be
self-medicating," said study co-author Alan Cooper of the University of
Adelaide's Australian Centre for Ancient DNA (ACAD).
"Certainly,
our findings contrast markedly with the rather simplistic view of our ancient
relatives in popular imagination," he added.
The study
is the latest to recast our long-extinct cousins, long thought of as
thick-skulled and slow-witted, in a more positive light.
Other
recent findings have started to paint a picture of Neanderthals as
sophisticated beings who made cave art, took care of the elderly, buried their
dead and may have been the first jewellers -- though they were probably also cannibals.
In 2012, a
study in the journal Naturwissenschaften said Neanderthals appeared to have
used medicinal herbs such as yarrow and chamomile.
Neanderthals
lived in parts of Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East for up to 300,000
years but appear to have vanished some 40,000 years ago.
This
coincided more or less with the arrival of homo sapiens out of Africa, where
modern humans emerged some 200,000 years ago.
Vegetarian
Neanderthals
and homo sapiens interbred, leaving a small contribution of less than two
percent to the DNA of all humans except for people from Africa, where
Neanderthals never lived.
For the
latest study, an international team did a genetic analysis of DNA trapped in
the dental plaque of four Neanderthals -- two from Spy Cave in Belgium and two
from El Sidron.
Calcified
plaque preserves the DNA of microorganisms that lived in the mouth, windpipe
and stomach, as well as bits of food stuck between teeth -- which can later
reveal what a creature ate and what its state of health was.
From the
oldest plaque ever to be genetically analysed, the team concluded the Belgian
Neanderthals ate a diet of woolly rhino, wild sheep and mushrooms, living a
hunter-gatherer lifestyle.
"Those
from El Sidron Cave, on the other hand, showed no evidence for meat
consumption, but appeared instead to have a largely vegetarian diet comprising
pine nuts, moss, mushrooms and tree bark," Cooper said in a statement.
El Sidron
at the time was in a densely forested environment, added the study's lead
author Laura Weyrich, also from ACAD.
"In
contrast, the Spy Neanderthals were living in a steppe-like environment, so
it's easy to picture large, beastly animals wandering around as a major source
of food," she told AFP.
The sick
Spanish Neanderthal was the only one with traces of poplar or Penicillium in
his dental plaque.
New study finds natural aspirin and penicillin in ailing Neanderthal of 50,000 years ago https://t.co/wgI9pLudMC pic.twitter.com/nTGL4fCezm— AFP news agency (@AFP) March 9, 2017
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