South Africa’s Giant Land Snail Snacks Studied

JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA—According to a Science News report, evidence for the consumption of Giant African land snails (Achatinidae) by early modern humans beginning some 170,000 years ago has been uncovered at the Border Cave site, which is located in eastern South Africa. The practice of roasting and eating the snails in the cave continued for about 100,000 years. Chemist Marine Wojcieszak of the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage in Brussels and her colleagues were able to determine that the snails had been roasted by demonstrating that their shells, which are made up of layers of aragonite, transition into calcite when heated. The changes were observed with infrared and Raman spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy. The researchers concluded that the snails would have been easy to hunt, could have been stored alive for a long period of time, and served as an excellent source of nutrients. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Quaternary Science Reviews. To read about another discovery from Border Cave, go to "Paleolithic Bedtime."