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Friday 27 March 2020

Neanderthal panic buying



Until now, many Neanderthal sites had shown only small-scale use of marine resources; for example, scattered shells. But now archaeologists have excavated a cave on the coast of Portugal and discovered a huge, structured deposit of remains, including from mussels and limpets, dating to between 106,000 and 86,000 years ago.

Researchers say the discovery shows that Neanderthals systematically collected seafood: in some layers the density of shells was as high as 370kg per cubic metre.

370kg of shells per cubic metre sounds very much like evidence of panic buying to me. Were the police involved in the excavation? I hope so. 

4 comments:

Sam Vega said...

I've seen Neanderthals panic-buying in our local Budgens.

Scrobs. said...

That's quite a lot of vongole...

(I once had one by mistake, and oooooogh, never, ever again...)!

Graeme said...

I reckon someone had a thumb on the scales

A K Haart said...

Sam - we expect Tesco to be like that when we next go.

Scrobs - I've never tried vongole but it sounds like my kind of grub.

Graeme - and that would be a big thumb presumably.