Neanderthal Crab Roast Leftovers Are Found in a Portuguese Cave [View all]

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A number of cities vie for the unofficial title of “seafood capital of the world,” and Lisbon has a good claim. The city, Portugal’s coastal capital, is famous for its salted cod, sardines and stuffed brown crab. A study published Tuesday in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology reveals that these brown crabs have been on the menu for a long time. In a cave less than 20 miles from Lisbon, researchers discovered charred remnants of shells and claws: evidence that Neanderthals were cooking and eating crab 90,000 years ago.

The cave site, Gruta da Figueira Brava, was about a mile from the coast when Neanderthals lived there. It contained multiple chambers, including an open “porch” living area, probably large enough to accommodate at least an extended family. Rising sea levels slowly brought the Atlantic to the cave door.

Reaching Gruta da Figueira Brava today involves a climb down a craggy cliff face overlooking the sea. “It was a bit adventurous,” said Mariana Nabais, a postdoctoral researcher at the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution and an author of the study. “In a way, it’s good that it’s hard to get there, because that’s what allowed it to preserve such incredible, incredible finds.”

During excavations, she and her team brought sediments from the cave back to their field lab on the hilltop so they could be studied, but Dr. Nabais and her colleagues recognized some bits of debris right away. “You can immediately identify them on site as being crab claws, especially in Portugal, because we have a tradition of eating crabs a lot,” she said. “It was a big surprise, especially because when we were digging there, we still didn’t have that idea of Neanderthals actively eating shellfish.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/07/science/neanderthals-crab-portugal.html


Pieces of crustaceans from Gruta da Figueira Brava including from a barnacle, Perforatus perforatus (A); brown crab (B) with black burns; brown crab showing impact flakes (C); and pincers with longitudinal breaks (D).
Credit...Mariana Nabais/Catherine Dupont/João Zilhão, Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology, 2023

I love it when leftovers make headlines.