Noordhoek, one of the Cape peninsula’s sleepier outposts, where the day’s toughest decision is often whether to walk or ride a horse to the beach. The residents were in for quite a surprise then when they found a human skull in the sand dunes this past weekend.

The skull is believed to be hundreds, perhaps even thousand years of years old and may well be the remains of a member of a hunter-gatherer community that lived in the area. Archaeologist Tim Hart had this to say to Noordhoek Valley:

It looked as if it was a youngish individual, perhaps a teenager, and had flattened molars. The precolonial people had a lot of grit in their diet, from sand in shellfish or sand around watsonia bulbs they ate, and this wore down their molars.

The skull has been moved to UCT’s archaeology department for safe-keeping. Police have handed the investigation over to heritage authorities, whilst those in nearby Scarborough (way, way on the other side of the lentil curtain) have taken to talking non-stop about how effective that diet still is for maintaining a healthy lifestyle.

[source:noordhoekvalley]

thanks sam