Neanderthals pioneered the exploration of marine resources

Science magazine published a study at Gruta da Figueira Brava (Portinho da Arrábida) revealing that fishing and shellfish collection contributed significantly to the Neanderthals' subsistence economy in the Middle Paleolithic.

This work was directed by João Zilhão, researcher at the Archeology Center of the University of Lisbon (UNIARQ) and senior author of the article. The study also had interdisciplinary collaborations by two dozen co-authors from several international institutions, including the University of Coimbra, through the Department of Earth Sciences of the Faculty of Science and Technology and CITEUC - Center for Research on Earth and Space, in that researcher P. Callapez participated in the taxonomic classification of molluscs used as food.

The cave was used continuously as a place of habitation throughout the twenty millennia between 106 and 86 thousand years ago — that is, during the last interglacial period, when the Earth's climate was similar to the current one. The archaeological remains left by these communities of Neanderthal Man — ashes, coals and other evidence of an intensive use of fire, tools in quartz and flint, food remains — are abundant.

The conclusions of this multidisciplinary study show that the majority of Neanderthals lived like those of Figueira Brava, that the familiarity of humans with the sea and its resources is much older than previously thought, and that the image of Neanderthals as people of the cold, who specialize in hunting mammoths, rhinos, bison and reindeer, is a distortion created by the history of archaeological investigation.