- Quién
- El Salt human faeces
- Dónde
- España (El Salt)
- Cuándo
A paper published in PLOS ONE on 25 June 2014 dates the earliest known human faecal matter to c. 50,000 years BP (before present). "The Neanderthal Meal: A New Perspective Using Faecal Biomarkers" by Ainara Sistiaga et al reports that the samples, found at a Neanderthal campsite at El Salt near Alicante, Spain, were analysed using gas chromatography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and represent the earliest positive identification of human excrement. The evidence also lends support to the view that Neanderthals were omnivorous and consumed vegetable matter as well as meat.
El Salt is a Middle Palaeolithic dig site.
Ainara Sistiaga is a PhD at the Department of Geography and History, University of La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain, and is a visiting professor at the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. The other authors are Carolina Mallol, Bertila Galván and Roger Everett Summons.
