Neanderthal groups had their own local food culture

A comparison of cut marks on bones reveals that Neanderthal groups living fairly close to each other had their own distinct ways of butchering animals

By Chris Simms

17 July 2025

An illustration of a Neanderthal group preparing food

LUIS MONTANYA/MARTA MONTANYA/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

Neanderthals may have had traditional ways of preparing food that were particular to each group. Discoveries from two caves in what is now northern Israel suggest that the residents there butchered the same kinds of prey in their own distinctive ways.

Modern humans, or Homo sapiens, weren’t the first hominins to prepare and cook food. There is evidence that Neanderthals, for example, which inhabited Europe and Asia until about 40,000 years ago, used flint knives to butcher what they caught, cooked a wide range of animals and spiced up their menu with wild herbs.

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To learn more about Neanderthal food culture, Anaëlle Jallon at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and her colleagues examined evidence at the caves of Amud and Kebara in northern Israel.

These sites, which are just some 70 kilometres apart, provide a unique opportunity to examine local cultural differences. Stone tools, food remains and hearths found at each site reveal that Neanderthals occupied both caves, probably during winters, during the same time period.

“You find the same species of animals to hunt and it’s more or less the same landscape,” says Jallon. “It will be the same kind of weather, and Neanderthals at both ate mostly gazelles and some fallow deer that they complemented with a few bigger animals like boar or aurochs.”