Comments on Soltysiak's paper: “Comment: Low dental caries rate in Neandertals: The result of diet or the oral flora compositions?”

A low frequency of dental caries in Neandertal population is still puzzling. Many authors stress that the lower frequency of dental caries was related to a meat diet. However, a recent publication in HOMO – Journal Comparative Human Biology presented a new interpretation of dental caries in Neandertals. In this article, Soltysiak supports the thesis that the lower frequency of caries in the Neandertal population from the Near East could not be related to the low-sugar diet, but rather to the absence of cariogenic bacteria species (S. mutans). Although this hypothesis is interesting, I suspect it to be based on several erroneous assumptions, and a misunderstanding of caries as a disease. Although he stressed that the caries lesion is related to many different factors, in his argument he considers one of two alternatives “a low-sugar diet or a lack of cariogenic bacterial species”.