The "caveman" diet has become pretty trendy in years past. The Paleo diet as we know it is pretty simple: meat, fish, fruits and vegetables.
But what about snails?
A new study shows that people who lived in the Stone Age in the area that is now part of Spain may have eaten snails. That would make them far ahead of their Mediterranean neighbors who ate snails 10,000 years later.
The study was published on Wednesday, August 20, in the journal PLOS ONE. The lead author, Javier Fernández-López de Pablo is a researcher at Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social.
There were many snails roaming the Earth at the same time as humans, from the Late Pleistocene and the Holocene periods. However, until this study researchers had not discovered whether Paleolithic humans ate snails. The research group that orchestrated this study discovered the remains of snail shells dating back to approximately 30,000 years ago at a spot in Spain called Cova de la Barriada, a spot where evidence of ancient human residences had recently been discovered. The researchers studied the snail shells to determine the likelihood of the ancient humans having gathered them to eat. They looked at patterns of the selection of shells, how many there were at the site, and how old the snails were when they died based on how large the shell was.
The group found that there were large accumulations of a certain species of land snails at three different spots in the prehistoric site that were close to man-made objects that were instruments that could have been used to cook the snails and eat them. They also found parts of other animals that humans probably cooked and ate mixed in with the snail shells. Humans probably cooked the animals in amber made of pine and juniper.
This suggests that beginning sometime around 30,000 years ago, the human diet expanded to include snails. The oldest evidence of humans eating snails that had previously been discovered took place in other areas around the Mediterranean, about 10,000 years later. These shells are compelling evidence that humans ate snails as long ago as 30,000 years in the past. It looks like the Spanish had a lengthy lead on the French for realizing that snails could be tasty.
So, if you know someone on the Paleo diet, let them know that there's one thing they should add to their diet of meat, fruit and vegetables: a healthy amount of escargot.
