“Neanderthals, vitamin C, and scurvy”

Abstract

This paper explores the role of vitamin C (ascorbic acid) in the foodways of hunter-gatherers—both ethnohistoric and Paleolithic—whose diet seasonally or over much of the year, of necessity, was comprised largely of animal foods. In order to stave off scurvy, such foragers had to obtain a minimum of about 10 mg per day of vitamin C. However, there is little to no vitamin C in muscle meat, being concentrated instead in various internal organs and brain. Even ruminant stomach contents, despite the abundance of partially digested plants, contains almost none. Moreover, many of the “meatiest” anatomical units in a carcass, such as the thigh muscles or “hams” associated with the femur, are extremely lean in most wild ungulates, making them nutritionally much less valuable to northern foragers than archaeologists commonly assume (for example, Inuit and other indigenous peoples of the arctic and subarctic commonly use the thigh meat as dog food). Vitamin C is also the most unstable vitamin, rapidly degrading or disappearing when exposed to water, air, light, heat, and pH levels above about 4.0. As a consequence, common methods of preparing meat for storage and consumption (e.g., drying, roasting, boiling) may lead to significant loss of vitamin C. There are two effective methods of minimizing such loss: (1) eating meat raw (fresh or frozen); and (2) eating the meat after it has been putrefied. Putrefaction has distinct advantages that make it a common, if not essential, way of preparing and preserving meat among northern latitude foragers and, for the same reasons, very likely also among Paleolithic foragers in the colder climes of Pleistocene Eurasia. Putrefaction “pre-digests” the meat (including the organs), making it much less costly to ingest and metabolize than raw meat; and it lowers the pH, greatly increasing the stability of vitamin C. These observations offer insights into critical nutritional constraints that likely had to be addressed by Neanderthals and later hominins in any context where their diet was heavily meat-based for a substantial part of the year.