Oldest cooked meal eaten by Neanderthals discovered in northern Iraq

An artist’s impression of a Neanderthal father and his daughter

(Picture: Tom Bjorklund/Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology)

The Shanidar Cave site, a Neanderthal settlement in northern Iraq, has yielded the earliest food remains yet discovered.

Some of the burned food remnants turned out to be pancake and flatbread with a “nutty” taste, resulting in convincing claims that Neanderthals had a rich food culture and did not survive on raw animal or plant berries.