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Archaeologists have discovered the first signs of making bread in a site from north-east Jordan. Dating back to 14,400 years, the discovery shows that ancient hunter-gatherers made and ate bread 4,000 years before the Neolithic era and the introduction of agriculture. Too bad for the "paleo diet" being a thing.
Bread making predates agriculture, according to a new study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This is quite the revelation, given the conventional thinking that bread only appeared after the advent of agriculture. The discovery means that ancient hunter-gatherers used the wild ancestors of domesticated cereals, such as wild einkorn and advanced tubers, to make flat bread type food products. What's more, the new paper shows that bread had already become a staple established before the Neolithic period and the agricultural revolution.
A research team led by Amaia Arranz-Otaegu of the University of Copenhagen analyzed fragments of charred food remains found at a Natufian hunter-gatherer site in northeastern Jordan called Shubayqa 1 The remains of burnt bread, found in two ancient basalts The stone chimneys were radiocarbon dated 14,400 years ago, about two hundred years old. This corresponds to the early Natufian period and the Upper Paleolithic era. The Natufian culture has lived in the Levant, a region of the eastern Mediterranean, from about 14,600 to 11,600 years old.
Prior to this discovery, the oldest known bread came from the 9,500-year-old Çatal Höyük colony in Anatolia, Turkey. Çatalhöyük dates back to the Neolithic period, a time when ancient humans had already settled in permanent villages and cultivated agriculture. The bread found at Shubayqa 1 is earlier than Çatal Höyük bread of about 5000 years old, and it is now the oldest example of bread making in the archaeological register.
For the study, researchers analyzed 24 carbonized bread fragments from the excavations of Shubayqa 1 site using a scanning electron microscope (SEM). Through SEM, the researchers were able to obtain the high-resolution images needed to study fine structures embedded in calcined materials. These images were compared to experimentally produced bread, allowing researchers to identify archaeological specimens. The analysis by SEM is time consuming and researchers have managed to analyze only 24 fragments out of a total of 600 pieces that appear to be leftovers of bread or bread.
Tobias Richter, an associate professor at the University of Copenhagen and co-author of the new study, said the discovery was surprising on many levels.
"First, this bread is prior to the advent of agriculture and agriculture – it has always been thought that it was the reverse" said Richter to Gizmodo. "Secondly, that the bread was of high quality because it was made with fine enough flour.We did not expect to find such flour so early in the history of humanity. hunter-gatherer bread we have does not only contain wild barley flour, wheat and oats, but also tubers, namely tubers of aquatic plants (sedges). therefore more a multi-grain bread than white bread. "
Richter said that the method used to identify bread fragments is new, and that other researchers should use this technique to reanalyze the old ones" [19659013] "I think it's very important to recognize that bread is such an important staple in the world today," Richter said. "The fact that we can now show that it started much earlier than I thought was intriguing enough, I think, and can help explain the wide variety of different types of breads that have evolved. in different cultures around the world over the millennia 19659005] Dorian Fuller, an archaeobotanist at University College London and co-author of the new study, said that it is very plausible that hunters- gatherers can make bread without the benefit of agriculture.
"The most basic bread is flour, water and dry heat. The flour should also ideally include some protein, such as gluten, which is found in wheat to hold the dough together and provide elasticity, "said Fuller Gizmodo." So, this requires an appropriate flour, and the wild wheat and barley contain gluten. "
In addition, the equipment needed to produce flour, such as stone tools for pulverizing grain, already existed at the time when this ancient bread was manufactured. some of the older examples date back 25,000 years or more. "So, the fact that people would have things on the ground to treat it is not surprising," Richter said.Finally, the third element to make drying bread, oven heat, would probably exist in a culture without ceramics, which describes this particular culture at the time.
Ehud Weiss, an archaeobotanist at Bar-Ilan University who n & # 39; 39, was not involved in the new study, said the new document describes a significant discovery.
"One of the interesting aspects of rebuilding our ancestors' diet is the technology that they use," Weiss told Gizmodo. "Here it is clear that these people have milled and mixed several types of food products, cereals and roots to create a cooked product."
Weiss says that it's important to remember that caloric return was a major problem for hunter-gatherers. , especially in harsh environments. Crushed and baked foods have a higher glycemic index (GI) than raw foods, where GI is a relative ranking of carbohydrates in foods based on their impact on blood glucose.
"Today, we use GI as a tool to avoid food. it's going to add too much sugar to our bloodstream, "said Weiss.For hunter-gatherers struggling in hostile environments to get more energy from their food, the situation is, of course, the opposite. Ability to increase the caloric return of their food is therefore an important step in the development of human nutrition. "
Francesca Balossi Restelli of the Sapienza University of Rome, also not involved in the new study, was not surprised by the discovery, saying that a discovery of this nature was expected. "Certainly, finding charred remains of flour products is an indispensable demonstration of the fact that the large quantity of mortars, pestles and molders already showed us," Restelli told Gizmodo. "If people grew plants, they had mortars, so they had to cook bread-like foods. The discovery described in the PNAS article is therefore certainly very significant, but not totally unexpected. This is very good news because it confirms the current trend of thinking and research. "
Martin Jones, an archaeobotanist from the University of Cambridge, is enthusiastic about the new paper, both about the dietary habits of Paleolithic humans and about using a new technique to study the pieces of plant material left by ancient humans
"If we listen to a lot of familiar stories about how humans ate before the advent of agriculture, we hear a lot about animals, and a little bit seafood, "said Jones to Gizmodo." We do not yet know how they worked with plants, and we are starting to realize that herbal cooking is very old and very important. "[19659005"Lookingatthepulverizedplantmaterialisstillprettynovel"Jonessaid"WethearchaeobotanistsarenaturallymorecomfortableidentifyingplantsbeforetheyarereducedtomushButtheSEMshereshowhowmuchcellpatternisstilldiscernibleandhowfruitfulitcanbetopersevereandlookatitmoreclosely"
In conclusion, this study reminds us, again, that the so-called Paleo diet is not a real thing, or at the very least not a coherent and unified regime that existed through In addition, this study does not tell us which particular ancestral diet was "the healthiest", and it is doubtful whether archeology can tell us anything significant about it. Is a healthy and balanced diet, you should listen to the experts: Eat a lot of vegetables and fruits, choose whole grains, get your protein and avoid highly processed foods, especially those that contain added sugar
[PNAS]
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