Origins of bread discovered 14,400 years ago in Jordan

By Dr. Ananya Mandal, MD July 18, 2018

Scientists found the remains of a meal shared by a group of Natufian hunter-gatherers some 14,400 years ago. They noted the expected meat varieties, including those from a gazelle, waterfowl and hare, and were surprised by three or four types of flat bread consisting of mixed grains.

Scanning Electron Microscope Images of Shubayqa Bread Remnants 1. (A) Sample Number 6 showing typical porous matrix of bread with small closed voids (B) Detail of a layer of bread Sample aleurone number 17 (at least unicellular). (C) sample number 12 showing the vascular tissue, the arrow marks the xylem vessels in longitudinal section.Photo Image: PNAS

This gives archaeologists an image of the eating habits at stone age and reveals also that bread making was practiced before the rise of agriculture some 4,000 years after the meal.

Researchers from the University of Copenhagen, University College London and the University of Cambridge dig a few stone chimneys at the Jordanian site northeast of Shubayqa 1 between 2012 and 2015. They found the Remains of this meal on the excavation site and published their findings in a study in the last issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences .

The researchers write that the Nstufians were people who lived in the eastern Mediterranean region between 12,500 and 9,500 BC. approximately. They made bread hundreds of centuries before their descendants created permanent colonies where they could farm.

The head of the study, Amaia Arranz Otaegui, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Copenhagen, said that they had stumbled on crumbs. the crumbs were nuts or seeds or charred wood. They then badyzed 24 carbonized samples to discover that the samples had a porous texture that was found only in bread.

She then found tissues similar to rye, millet, barley, wheat, einkorn tubers in burnt remains using a scanning electron microscope and were certain that they were bread crumbs made from these cereals. She speculated that these cereals could have been ground with tubers of club rushes which are a form of starchy roots.

The final mixture probably gave rise to a fine paste which would be mixed with water to form a paste. This dough was probably baked on a fireplace or on a hot flat stone to produce something similar to unleavened flat bread.

Arranz Otaegui says that this study shows that before real agriculture was in place, people were making bread from wild cereals. In a statement, Tobias Richter, archaeologist and co-author of the University of Copenhagen, said that it was possible that the making of bread from wild cereals was long and tedious, which favored the production of bread. advent of the agricultural revolution. more convenient source of basic grains and food.

Before that, an earlier archaeological discovery dates back to the making of bread about 9,000 years ago. A dig in Turkey shows the use of flour and bread made from wheat, barley, ground beans, chickpeas and lentils. These loaves were baked in an oven, contrary to the present invention, which finds flatbreads baked on hot stones or on fireplaces.