Prehistoric cooking might have been extra complicated than we thought, based on a research revealed final week within the journal Antiquity.

Researchers analyzed charred meals stays at two places—the Shanidar Collapse Iraq’s Zagros Mountains and the Franchthi Collapse Greece—to realize perception into how Neanderthals and early fashionable people ready meals. They discovered proof of cooking involving a wide range of substances, processes and deliberate selections.

“Our findings are the primary actual indication of complicated cooking—and thus of meals tradition—amongst Neanderthals,” Chris Hunt, an knowledgeable in cultural paleoecology at Liverpool John Moores College and coordinator of the excavation, tells the Guardian’s Linda Geddes.

On the Shanidar Cave, the researchers analyzed meals stays from roughly 70,000 years in the past, when Neanderthals lived on the web site. In addition they analyzed stays from round 40,000 years in the past, when early fashionable people lived there. On the Franchthi Cave, they analyzed meals remnants that early fashionable people who have been hunter-gatherers consumed some 12,000 years in the past.

At each archaeological websites, researchers recognized related crops and culinary practices, which can level to a shared meals tradition, says lead research creator Ceren Kabukcu, an archaeobotanical scientist on the College of Liverpool, to CNN’s Katie Hunt.

The researchers’ evaluation means that early fashionable people and Neanderthals weren’t simply consuming protein from animals; they’d complicated diets that consisted of a wide array of crops and diverse relying on location. In addition they used “a variety of tips to make their meals extra palatable” reminiscent of soaking and pounding, per a press release from the College of Liverpool.

“This research factors to cognitive complexity and the event of culinary cultures during which flavors have been vital from a really early date,” says Kabukcu within the assertion. “Our work conclusively demonstrates the complexities within the early hunter-gatherer weight loss program that are akin to fashionable meals preparation practices. For instance, wild nuts and grasses have been usually mixed with pulses, like lentils, and wild mustard.”

John McNabb, an archaeologist on the Centre for the Archaeology of Human Origins on the College of Southampton who was not concerned within the analysis, tells CNN that our information of the Neanderthal weight loss program has significantly developed “as we transfer away from the concept of [Neanderthals] simply consuming big portions of hunted recreation meat.”

“Extra knowledge is required from Shanidar, but when these outcomes are supported then Neanderthals have been consuming pulses and a few species from the grass household that required cautious preparation earlier than consumption,” he provides. “Subtle methods of meals preparation had a a lot deeper historical past than beforehand thought.”

To additional perceive the Neanderthal weight loss program, Hunt and his colleagues tried to recreate—and eat—the same recipe utilizing seeds discovered close to the caves.

How did their creation prove? Hunt tells the Guardian, “It made a type of pancake-cum-flatbread which was actually very palatable—a type of nutty style.”