World's oldest human poop may have been found in Spain
Maybe archaeologists should watch where they step. Researchers have stumbled across what may be the world's oldest human poop, deposited by Neanderthals about 50,000 years ago atop an ancient campfire in Spain.
If the discovery is truly a prehistoric latrine – a claim that has provoked skepticism among other researchers – it contradicts the pop-culture image of Neanderthals as hunters who subsisted on hunks of flesh. Two of the new poop samples contain the chemical footprints of both meat and plant consumption, providing the earliest known evidence that humans were omnivores who ate significant quantities of plant-based food.
To the uneducated eye, the newfound Pleistocene poop doesn't look like poop except for its light-brown color, and the scientists who found it weren't looking for coprolites – preserved dung – at all. They were poking around rudimentary hearths at the Neanderthal site known as El Salt, hoping to find evidence of food preparation.
