Here is the oldest bread in the world, prepared 14,000 years ago: it rewrites the history of agriculture

It goes back 14,000 years. The oldest bread in the world was found in northeastern Jordan, or at least what remains as researchers have identified the charred remains of a focaccia in a kind of kiln used by hunter-gatherers. l & # 39; era.

It was discovered by scientists from University College London, the University of Copenhagen and the University of Cambridge. This is the oldest direct evidence of the bread found so far and also precedes the advent of agriculture of at least 4000 years

Despite its importance in modern cuisine, the origins of bread are so little known. In the past, it was thought that the first to produce it were Stone Age (Neolithic) men, some 9000 years ago, at the Çatalhöyük site in Turkey. Results published on The work of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that the production of wild grain bread would have encouraged hunter-gatherers to grow cereals , thus contributing to the agricultural revolution of the Neolithic. The results provide the first empirical evidence of bread production, a discovery that could rewrite the history of agriculture .

Scientists identified charred bread at a site of Natufian hunter-gatherers who lived in this area known as Shubayqa 1, 14,400 years ago. It is an area located in the desert north-east of Jordan. The Natufiana or natufita culture was a Mesolithic culture.

" Natufian hunter-gatherers are of particular interest to us because they were living through a period of transition during which people became more sedentary and their diet started to flint blades and tools in stone found on the Natufian sites in the Levant have long led archaeologists to suspect that people had started to exploit plants in a different and perhaps more effective way.in Shubayqa 1 is the first evidence of bread recovered until Now, and shows that cooking was invented before plant cultivation, " said Professor Tobias Richter of the University of Copenhagen), who led the excavations at Shubayqa 1. [19659008] The site, initially discovered and briefly excavated by British archaeologist Alison Betts in the 1990s, consists of two well-preserved buildings, each containing and no stone chimney with a large circular structure

Archaeologists from the University of Copenhagen conducted four excavation seasons on the site, between 2012 and 2015, where they identified food remains charred together with carved stones, stone tools, animal bones and remains of plants

Remains of bread are very similar to the unleavened focaccia identified in different Neolithic and Roman sites in Europe and in Turkey. We now know that bread-like products have been produced long before the development of agriculture. The next step will be to badess whether the production and bread consumption influenced the emergence of the culture of the plants needed to prepare this food.

Photo: Joe Roe

Scorched food remains were badyzed using scanning electron microscopes that identified the microstructures and particles of each food found.

" Bread requires intensive treatment, including decortication, grinding cereals, The fact that it was produced before the cultivation methods suggests that it was considered special , and the desire to produce this special food probably contributed to 's decision to start growing cereals based on new methodological developments that allow us to identify leftover bread from very small charred fragments using a high magnification nto " said Professor Dorian Fuller of the Institute of Archeology of University College London

An exceptional discovery, which could throw a new light on the origins of this precious and ancient food.

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