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The burnt remains of a bread baked about 14,500 years ago in a stone chimney of a site in northeastern Jordan sparked a delightful surprise: people began to make bread, a vital staple.
The discovery shows that hunter-gatherers in the eastern Mediterranean have reached the cultural stage of breadmaking much earlier than expected, more than 4,000 years before plant cultivation took root.
Scientists come to find the world's oldest bread in an old kiln pic.twitter.com/P2R7gd5mpG
– NowThis (@nowthisnews)
19 July 2018
What was in the bread
The flatbread, probably unleavened and somewhat like pita bread, was made of wild cereals such as barley, bread and butter. Spinach or oats, as well as tubers. 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 found on an archaeological site of the Black Desert. "The presence of bread on a site of this age is exceptional," says Amaia Arranz-Otaegui, an archeobotanical postdoctoral researcher at the University of Copenhagen and lead author of the research published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences .
Arranz-Otaegui has so far stated that the origin of bread has been badociated with the first agricultural societies that cultivated cereals and legumes. The oldest evidence of bread comes from a site dating back to 9100 years ago 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 start growing and growing plants if it becomes a desirable or highly desirable food."
Rewrite the History of Bread
Tobias Richter, an archaeologist and co-author of the study at the University of Copenhagen, pointed out the nutritional implications of l & rsquo; Adding bread to the diet.
"Bread provides us with an important source of carbohydrates and nutrients, including B vitamins, iron and magnesium, as well as fiber," Richter said.
There was abundant evidence from the site that Natufians had a diet based on meat and plants.
The round chimneys, made from flat basalt stones and measuring approximately one meter in diameter, were located in the middle of the huts.
Arranz-Otaegui said the researchers began trying to replicate the bread and were able to make flour from the type of tubers used in the prehistoric recipe. But that could have been an acquired taste.
"The taste of tubers," says Arranz-Otaegui, "is quite gritty and salty, but it's a little sweet too."
Reuters
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