McClellan: Turns out Neanderthals ate their vegetables

It's a dish I made a lot in my bachelor days. Preparation is easy and so is the cleanup. You simply take a pan, boil some water, throw in the noodles, pour the water out after a few minutes, put in the soup, stir and heat for a couple of more minutes. You can eat it right out of the pan.

Of course, for the kids I would use dishes. I also added a can of peas. I figured that made the dish more nutritious.

The peas didn't impress my wife. She never liked gruel.

I'll admit that it's not a gourmet dish like macaroni and cheese, but it has a sentimental value to me. My mother used to make it. She would gussy it up with canned chicken and a can of mushrooms.

Personally, I favor simplicity. A can of peas, fine. But nothing else.

I used to think this penchant for simplicity was genetic. As regular readers know, I have long been convinced that I hail from Neanderthals.

Those Neanderthal genes skip generations and generations and then pop up. That's how I can come from a long line of tradesmen and yet be totally incompetent.

These genes that slumber for generations are called recessive genes. Or maybe not. I don't understand science. Or mechanics.

In a way, I have been blessed. It would have been difficult to be mechanically incompetent in previous generations. There was a time before Jiffy Lube when men were expected to change the oil in their cars. For that matter, men used to fix their own cars. I remember my dad doing a "brake job."

You would not want to be a passenger in a car on which I had done a "brake job."

Today is all about technology. How difficult it must be for a young Neanderthal! To function in today's society, you have to understand computers and remember passwords. You have to be able to text.

So I feel I was born into a Golden Age for Neanderthals. Mechanically incompetent and technologically illiterate, I was nevertheless able to make my way.

It has not always been easy. Sometimes I have to ask people to make allowances for me. The other day I was at PetSmart, and I was trying to operate the machine that makes name tags for animals. I had to ask for help.

"This is a little complex for me. I'm a Neanderthal," I said.

The cashier gave me a suspicious look. She is probably one of those people who think Neanderthals are extinct.

I am always heartened when I see something that confirms my theory. Consider a story that was published in a science journal last week. An international team of researchers has concluded that Neanderthals ate vegetables.

In the old days, we were thought to be less sophisticated eaters. Scientists thought we favored a low-carb diet. Wooly mammoth with nothing on the side. That was breakfast, lunch and dinner.

But the researchers from Spain, the United Kingdom and Australia studied calcified dental plaque from five Neanderthals from the north Spanish site of El Sidrón and determined that we ate nuts, grasses and even green vegetables.

Green vegetables? Canned peas. Grasses? Egg noodles.

Cream of mushroom soup had not yet been invented or the researchers probably would have found a few empty cans around the campfire.

Also, the researchers determined that we were aware of the medicinal properties of some plants.

Here is what researcher Stephen Buckley from the University of York said: "The evidence indicating that this individual was eating bitter-tasting plants such as yarrow and camomile with little nutritional value is surprising. It is likely that these plants must have been selected for reasons other than taste."

Surprising? Like Homo sapiens are the only ones who are concerned about their health?

Actually, the early Neanderthals had it easy. They could pick their medicine. Literally. Just go outside and pick some yarrow.

Too bad Lipitor isn't a plant. I used to get some by going to the drugstore. That was almost as easy as picking a plant. Then my insurance sent me to an online pharmaceutical company. For a short time, things were OK, but then there was some kind of mix-up. The only way to straighten it out was to go on a website.

You might as well ask a Neanderthal to do a "brake job."

I was not able to straighten things out. For a while, I wondered what to do.

Thanks to the researchers, I now have an idea. I'm going to start growing yarrow and camomile. I'll put it in the gruel with the canned peas.