一項新研究表明，史前尼安德特人的飲食中蛆蟲含量豐富 (1/2)

Recently Yahoo News on-line picked up the following:

Prehistoric Neanderthal diets were maggot heavy, a new study suggests (1/2)

Katie Hunt, CNN

Fri, July 25, 2025 at 12:24 p.m. PDT·7 min read

Neanderthals had a voracious appetite for meat. They hunted big game and chowed down on woolly mammoth steak as they huddled around a fire. Or so thought many archaeologists who study the Stone Age.

Fresh meat was far from the only thing on the menu, according to a growing body of research that has revealed our archaic cousins ate a varied diet that included pulses and shellfish.

Still, a chemical signature in Neanderthal remains that suggests robust meat eating — observed at higher levels than those seen in top predators such as lions and wolves — has puzzled researchers for decades. Now, new research hints at an unexpected Stone Age food.

Maggots — the larvae of flies, which hatch in and feed on decaying animal tissue — may also have been a staple of prehistoric diets, a study published Friday in the journal Science Advances suggests.

Lead author Melanie Beasley, an assistant professor of biological anthropology at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, found that a taste for maggots could explain a distinctive chemical signature detected in the bones of prehistoric humans, including Homo sapiens and Neanderthals, a species that went extinct 40,000 years ago.

The findings back up a hypothesis that had been put forward by Beasley’s coauthor John Speth, an anthropologist at the University of Michigan, who has for nearly a decade argued that putrid meat and fish would have formed a key part of prehistoric diets. His work was based on ethnographic accounts of the diets of indigenous groups, who he said found rotten meat and maggots acceptable fare.

“Not a lot of people took notice, because it was like this is an out-there idea. And there wasn’t any data,” said Beasley, who heard Speth give a talk in 2017 and subsequently decided to test his hypothesis.

Understanding past diets

To understand past diets and where an animal sat in the ancient food chain, scientists study the chemical signature of different isotopes, or variants, of elements such as nitrogen or carbon, which are preserved in teeth and bones over thousands of years.

Researchers first found in the 1990s that the fossilized bones of Neanderthals unearthed in Northern Europe had particularly elevated levels of the nitrogen-15 isotope, a chemical signature that suggests their meat consumption was on par with hypercarnivores such as lions or wolves.

“Grass will have one (nitrogen) value, but then the deer that eats the grass is going to have a higher value, and then the carnivore that eats the deer is going to have an even higher value,” Beasley explained. “So you can track nitrogen through this trophic food web system.” Neanderthal remains, she said, had even higher nitrogen values than carnivores.

This was puzzling, however, because modern-day humans, unlike wolves and lions, cannot stomach large quantities of lean meat. Overindulging in it can lead to a potentially lethal form of malnutrition in which the liver fails to break down the protein and rid the body of excess nitrogen.

Known today as protein poisoning, the condition was more common among European explorers of North America — who dubbed the illness “rabbit poisoning” or “mal de caribou” — given that wild game was far leaner than today’s farmed meat. Archaeologists believe that Neanderthals understood the importance of fatty nutrients, and, at least in one location in what’s now Germany, processed animal bones on a large scale to extract the fat.

Rotten meat might be higher in nitrogen than fresh tissue and may have been responsible for boosting nitrogen levels in Neanderthal bones, Speth’s research has suggested.

Not long after hearing Speth speak, Beasley, who was previously a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where she conducted research at its Forensic Anthropology Center, decided to investigate. The research facility, sometimes described as a body farm, was established to study how the human body decomposes.

There, she analyzed nitrogen levels in the rotting tissue of donated human corpses left outdoors and the fly larvae that formed in the muscle tissue. The work, conducted over a two-year period, required a strong stomach, she said.

Beasley found that nitrogen levels increased modestly over time in the human tissue. However, she observed much higher nitrogen levels in the fly larvae, suggesting that Neanderthals and early modern humans likely consumed animal meat laced with maggots on a regular basis.

“I started getting the (nitrogen) values back, and they were just astronomically high,” Beasley recalled.

“John (Speth) and I started talking: What if it’s not just the putrid meat, but it’s the fact that … they’re never going to be able to prevent flies from coming and landing on the meat, and so fly larva just become part of the delicacy,” she said.

The data from her work not only provides insight into the Neanderthal diet but also informs modern forensic science, with nitrogen levels in maggots that form in human corpses helping scientists pinpoint time since death, she noted.

(to be continued)

Translation

一項新研究表明，史前尼安德特人的飲食中蛆蟲含量豐富 (1/2)

尼安德特人 (Neanderthals) 對肉類有著極大的胃口。他們獵捕大型獵物，並圍坐在火堆旁，狼吞虎嚥地吃著猛獁象的排。許多研究石器時代的考古學家都是這麼認為的。

越來越多的研究表明，我們的古代表親飲食種類繁多，包括豆類和貝類，鮮肉遠非菜單上的唯一食物。

然而，尼安德特人遺骸中一種表明其肉食量旺盛的化學特徵 - 其含量甚至高於獅子和狼等頂級掠食者 - 幾十年來一直困擾著研究人員。現在，新的研究暗示了一種意想不到的石器時代食物。

週五發表在《科學進展》雜誌上的一項研究表明，蛆 - 蒼蠅的幼蟲，在腐爛的動物組織中孵化並進食爛肉 - 也可能是史前飲食的主要成分。

研究的主要作者、印第安納州西拉斐特市 Purdue大學的生物人類學助理教授 Melanie Beasley 發現，對蛆情有獨鍾可以解釋在史前人類骨骼中檢測到的一種獨特化學特徵，包括智人和4萬年前滅絕的尼安德特人。

這些發現支持了Beasley 的合著者、密西根大學人類學家 John Speth 提出的一個假設。近十年來，Beasley一直認為腐爛的肉類和魚類是史前飲食的重要組成部分。他的研究是基於對原住民群體飲食的民族誌記錄，他表示，這些原住民群體認為腐爛的肉類和蛆是可以接受的食物。

Beasley 說: 「這沒多少人注意到，因為這聽起來像是一個天方夜譚。而且沒有任何數據」。她在2017年聽了 Speth 的演講，隨後決定驗證他的假設。

 

了解過去的飲食

為了解過去的飲食以及動物在古代食物鏈中的位置，科學家研究了氮或碳等元素不同同位素（或變體）的化學特徵，這些元素在牙齒和骨骼中保存了數千年。

研究人員在1990年代首次發現，在北歐出土的尼安德特人骨骼化石中氮-15同位素的含量特別高，這一化學特徵表明他們的肉類食用量與獅子或狼等超級食肉動物相當。

Beasley 解釋: 「草會有一個(氮含量)值，但吃草的鹿的含氮值會高些，而吃鹿的食肉動物的氮含量會更高」; 「所以你可以透過這個食物網系統追蹤氮的含量」。她表示，尼安德特人遺骸的氮含量甚至比食肉動物更高。

然而，這是令人費解，因為現代人類與狼和獅子不同，無法消化大量瘦肉。過量食用瘦肉會導致一種可能致命的營養不良，肝臟無法分解蛋白質並排出體內多餘的氮。

這種疾病如今被稱為蛋白質中毒，在北美的歐洲探險家群體中更為常見 - 他們稱之為“中兔子毒”或“馴鹿病”，因為當時的野味比今天的養殖肉類要瘦得多。考古學家認為，尼安德特人了解脂肪營養的重要性，並且至少在如今德國的一個地方，他們曾大規模加工處理動物骨骼以提取脂肪。

Speth 的研究表明，腐爛的肉中的氮含量可能高於新鮮肉，這可能是導致尼安德特人骨骼中氮含量升高的原因。

在聽了 Speth 的演講後不久，曾在田納西大學 Knoxville 分校擔任博士後研究員的 Beasley 決定展開調查，她曾在該校的法醫人類學中心進行研究。這個研究機構有時被稱為 “屍體農場”，旨在研究人體的分解過程。

在那裡，她分析了遺棄在野外而被捐贈到來的人類屍體的腐爛組織, 及在組織中形成的蠅蛆中的氮含量。她說，這項工作持續了兩年，需要能夠忍受心理或生理上的壓力。

Beasley發現，人體組織中的氮含量會隨著時間的推移而略有增加。然而，她觀察到蠅蛆體內的氮含量要高得多，這表明尼安德特人和早期現代人類可能經常食用含有蛆的動物肉。

Beasley回憶道: 「我開始測量（氮）值，結果發現它們是天文數字般高」。

她說: 「我和約翰(Speth）開始討論：如果問題不僅僅是腐爛的肉，而是……他們永遠無法阻止蒼蠅飛來停在肉上，所以蠅蛆就成了美味佳餚的一部分」。

她指出她的研究數據不僅對尼安德特人的飲食提供了深刻的見解，也為現代法醫學提供了資訊。人類屍體中形成的蛆蟲的氮含量有助於科學家確定死亡時間。

（待續）