The oldest bread in the world found on the prehistoric site in Jordan

WASHINGTON: Charred remains of a flatbread baked about 14,500 years ago in a stone fireplace A site in northeastern Jordan surprised researchers: people began to make bread, a vital staple, millennia before developing agriculture.

No matter how you cut it out, the detailed discovery on Monday shows that hunter-gatherers in the eastern Mediterranean have reached the cultural stage of breadmaking.

Flatbread, presumably unleavened and somewhat similar to pita bread, was fashioned from wild cereals such as barley, einkorn or oats, as well as tubers. from a parent of aquatic papyrus, which had been ground into flour.

It was made by a culture called Natufians, who had begun to adopt a sedentary rather than nomadic way of life, and was "The presence of bread on a site of this age is exceptional," said Amaia Arranz- Otaegui, postdoctoral researcher in Archaeobotany at the University of Copenhagen and lead author of the research published in the journal. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Arranz-Otaegui said that until now, the origin of the bread had been badociated with the first agricultural societies that cultivated cereals and legumes. The oldest evidence of bread comes from a site dating back 9100 years in Turkey

"We must now badess whether there is a relationship between bread production and the origins of agriculture "Arranz-Otaegui said. "It is possible that bread has encouraged people to engage in culture and agriculture if it becomes a desirable or highly desirable food."

Tobias Richter, archaeologist and co-author of the University of Copenhagen's study on the nutritional implications of adding bread to the diet. "Bread provides us with an important source of carbohydrates and nutrients, including B vitamins, iron and magnesium, and fiber," Richter said.

Plentiful evidence of the site indicates that the Natufians are dieting food and meat. The round chimneys, made of flat basalt stones and measuring about a meter in diameter, were located in the middle of the huts.

Arranz-Otaegui said that the researchers began trying to replicate the bread, and managed to make flour from the type of tubers used in the prehistoric recipe. "The taste of the tubers," says Arranz-Otaegui, "is quite salty and salty, but it's a little sweet too."

(Report by Will Dunham) Edited by Sandra Maler)