14,000-year-old piece of dough: researchers discover the oldest bread

In Jordan, 14,000-year-old charred dough was found. The findings shed new light on the history of agriculture: Apparently, people already made bread before producing grain.

Gabor Paal, SWR

The first bread was a delicacy served to its guests 14,000 years ago – With a fatty drink, like beer? Or was it practical as a light, nutritious and nutritious food that hunters and gatherers could carry through the desert? These questions are now asked about the latest discovery in the Jordanian desert of Harrat Ash-Shaam.

"Black Desert" is also named. Basalt lava, wherever the eye is looking. However, it was not always as dry as today. Here, 130 kilometers northeast of the capital Amman, is the excavation site Shubayqa 1. Here, people lived 15,000 to 11,000 years ago – the last era before agriculture prevailed . Archaeologists talk about Natufian culture.

24 "bread" type remains

In Shubayqa, the remains of the walls bear witness to smaller buildings. In the middle of these vestiges of the walls are hearths. And in these chimneys, a British-British research team found 642 charred remains, of which 24 are described as "bread-like". They are dated at an age of 14,400 years – 4,000 years earlier than the earliest direct evidence of bread making up to now.

The flat, carbonized dough pieces have an average diameter of about half a centimeter. Its shape and composition could have been a kind of unleavened flatbread, write Amaia Arranz-Otaegui of the University of Copenhagen and her colleagues in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS). In the hearths as well as in the dough pieces were found remains of plants, both Einkorn and the root remains of the beach ledges.

Maybe Provision for the trip

The analysis of pieces of dough was ground, sifted and Chaff was separated from the grain. A complex process – much more laborious than hunting animals or collecting fruit.

Of all this, the researchers conclude: Bread may not have been a staple, plus a special-purpose meal. Maybe a meal for special occasions? It can also be used as provisions, since the chimneys of Shubayqa 1 had obviously remained after the last fire.

Bread or beer?

For years, early cereal cultivation has been less effective at making bread than the manufacture of a kind of beer: a sweet and alcoholic drink obtained by adding cereals to the food. water and saliva.

The "theory of beer" was based, among other things, on the fact that this primitive beer is easier to produce than bread and that the consumption of bread is documented much later. The last argument could be invalidated with the new discovery.

However, the production of bread and beer does not exclude each other, says veteran and historian Raiko Krauß of the University of Tübingen. The beer could have been a by-product of breadmaking "if you simply prolong the fermentation process". He believes that the discoveries of his colleagues in Jordan are remarkable, but not unexpected: "The fact that people turned the grain into porridge or into a kind of porridge or cereals suggested earlier finds of mortars and millstones. That they also made bread, that had to be suspected. If the discoveries of Jordan provide proof is possible. Theoretically, however, "surplus bread" can also be a cereal porridge that has fallen into the fire.

Krauss finds significant results for another reason: "Eating bread and drinking alcohol is traditionally attributed to sedentary communities, and Shubayka 1 is very clearly that hunter-gatherer societies have been able to do this. "

Possible Explanation of the Beginnings of Agriculture

However, this is not clarified: why did our ancestors become farmers, why did they begin to grow grain? This n & # 39; 39, was certainly not because they did not know how to do it before.At least, the research is largely in agreement: Homo sapiens knew the basic techniques thousands of years ago, but that was not the case. It is only after the end of the ice age that he began to cultivate the fields.Some people suspect that this has happened out of necessity.Because of climate change, the supply of meat and fruits is Suddenly rarefied, forcing people to cultivate.

The London archeologist Dorian Fuller – co-author of the study – suggests another explanation.As a result, people came up with the production of bread on the taste. "The desire to do more of this special food probably contributed to the decision to grow crops. "