A new study shows that humans who lived during the Stone Age era in the area that is now Spain could have eaten snails as part of their regular diet.

Paleolithic humans ate snails 10,000 years earlier than their Mediterranean counterparts. Snails were an extra food source that became important to their survival and adaptation.

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These Homo sapiens living in the Benidorm area were the first group of ancient humans recorded that included snails as part of their regular diet about 30,000 years ago.

These findings published in the journal PLOS ONE show archaeologists working in Cova de la Barriada found a massive number of snail shells. These shells were found along with stone tools and other animal remains in deep pits that were used for cooking.

The find dates from the early Gravettian era some 30,000 to 60,000 years ago.

Snails were known to roam around the Earth during the same time as humans in the Late Pleistocene and Holocene periods. Researchers have studied snail shells found on the site to determine how often ancient humans gathered snails to eat them.

Scientists also looked at the selection of shells and found out these ancient humans gathered a certain land snail species in different spots in the prehistoric site. Man-made tools were also found that could have been used to cook these land snails.

This study suggests these groups of humans had changed their diet by making it more diverse in order to adapt and increase their population, said Javier Fernández-López de Pablo of the Catalan Insitute of Human Palaeoecology and Evolution, the lead author of the study.

There were about 112 samples of Iberus alonensis excavated from the site. All the samples similar in shape and size, indicating ancient humans carefully picked adult snails for consumption.

It seems like Spaniards were the first ones to discover snails as a type of food source along with the Romans who have been known to consume snails as a luxurious dish some 2,000 years ago.

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