Archaeologists seeking to learn more about how Neanderthals prepared and cooked their food conducted a series of hands-on experiments with small fowl using flint flakes for butchering. They found that the flint flakes were surprisingly effective for butchering the birds, according to their new paper published in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology. They also concluded that roasting the birds damages the bones to such an extent that it’s unlikely they would be preserved in the archaeological record.