Reconstructing Neanderthal Diet: The Case for Carbohydrates." Journal of Human Evolution 162 (2022): (ScienceDirect)Evidence for plants rarely survives on Paleolithic sites, while animal bones and biomolecular analyses suggest animal produce was important to hominin populations, leading to the perspective that Neanderthals had a very-high-protein diet. But although individual and short-term survival is possible on a relatively low-carbohydrate diet, populations are unlikely to have thrived and reproduced without plants and the carbohydrates they provide.