MORE than 100,000 years ago, just south of Mossel Bay, people sat down to enjoy what has become a fairly rare feast — oysters.Mitochondrial DNA research has shown that all humans alive today descend from a small population that lived between 150,000 and 200,000 years ago, and archaeological research has shown that at least some of those people lived in Mossel Bay, say researchers at Pinnacle Point.While the South African chapter of the international Slow Food Movement has claimed the Cape rock oyster as the culinary hero of this ancient story, Dr Antonieta Jerardino, of the University of SA’s anthropology and archaeology department, says they have singled out the wrong species of bivalve. The delicacy in question is instead not one, but several species of shellfish — limpets and a species of large turban snail known as "alikreukel"."Oysters were hardly ever collected in those days, but did get harvested in modest numbers only later during the last two millennia," she says.It looks, ...
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