A 2012 study, published in the journal Naturwissenschaften, suggested that the presence of bitter and nutritionally-poor chamomile and yarrow residue on the plaque of 50,000-year-old Neanderthal teeth hints at plants being consumed for medicinal purposes.
But anthropologists reporting in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews have put forward a different theory. They suggest instead that the plant compounds could be from the part-digested stomach contents of hunted animals.
This is a practice still carried out by many cultures, including Australian Aborigines, who eat the stomach contents of kangaroo, and Greenland Inuit who consume the stomachs of reindeer as a delicacy.
Drawing parallels with these cultures, the team looked back at the original plaque research and determined that the plant material could well have come from eating animal stomachs.
Bunnies implicated in the demise of Neanderthals
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