The discovery in the Paleolithic site of Cova de la Barriada, in Benidorm (Alicante), of fossil remains of the species Iberus alonensis , popularly known as the Serrano snail , is proof of its consumption as food during the Gravettian period.
Until now it was thought that these mollusks began to form part of the human diet at the end of the Pleistocene , about 20,000 years ago, and that they were a very common snack during the initial Holocene (11,600-8,900 years), but this discovery provides new data on the question.
Today we know that about 30,000 years ago , at the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic, during the so-called Gravettian period, the Homo sapiens that inhabited the Mediterranean region of the Iberian Peninsula incorporated them into their intake on a frequent basis.
The study of the fossil remains of the species Iberus alonensis found in the Cova de la Barriada, published in the journal PLoS ONE , has been carried out by the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution (IPHES) under the direction of archaeologist Javier Fernández-López de Pablo.
Its main conclusion, after analyzing the selection patterns of the mollusk , its consumption and its accumulation in the site, as well as the remains of shells, its fossilization process, its composition and age, is that this food resource began to be used in the region. Levantine some 10,000 years earlier than in North Africa and the rest of Europe.
The research authors observed clusters of complete snail shells in three layers of the site , in a chronological interval of 31,000 to 26,900 years. The adult specimens were found near or even inside prehistoric homes where they were cooked, along with stone tools and other animal remains . The hearths were heated with pine and juniper firewood, which was also used to roast mollusks on the embers.
According to Fernández-López de Pablo, this behavior points to hitherto unknown patterns regarding the use of invertebrates in the human diet, which should have been broader and more varied than was thought during the early Upper Paleolithic in the Mediterranean basin.
It also seems that the land snail was the object of a sustainable systematic exploitation throughout the more than 4,000 years of occupation of the Cova de la Barriada, based on the selection of adult specimens. At that time, the demographic consolidation of the Homo sapiens populations in the Iberian Peninsula took place.
