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No matter how you cut it out, Monday's detailed find shows that hunter-gatherers in the eastern Mediterranean have reached the cultural stage of bread making much earlier than expected, more than 4,000 years
The flatbread, probably unleavened and somewhat like pita bread, was made from wild cereals such as barley, einkorn or l & rsquo; Oats, as well as tubers of a parent of aquatic papyrus that 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 in an archaeological site of the Black Desert.
The presence of bread on a site of this age is exceptional, "said 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.
Otaegui has so far declared that the origin of bread has been associated with the earliest 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 assess 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 engage in culture and agriculture if it becomes a desirable or highly desirable food."
Tobias Richter, archaeologist and co-author of the University of Copenhagen's study on the nutritional implications of adding bread to the diet. "Bread provides us with an important source of carbohydrates and nutrients, including B vitamins, iron and magnesium, and fiber," Richter said
. . The round chimneys, made of flat basalt stones and measuring about a meter in diameter, were located in the middle of the huts.
Arranz-Otaegui said that the researchers began trying to replicate the bread, and managed to make flour from the type of tubers used in the prehistoric recipe. "The taste of the tubers," says Arranz-Otaegui, "is pretty gritty and salty, but it's a little sweet too."
(Report by Will Dunham) Edited by Sandra Maler)
