Thousands of years
before the advent of agriculture, people were already making bread. That’s the
surprising conclusion of a new study based on a curious find in northeastern
Jordan.
At its most basic,
bread is the combination of processed cereal grains and water that have been
baked, fried, or steamed. The process leaves behind telltale chemical and
structural properties that researchers can use to identify the staple food. And
that’s just what archaeologists found when they investigated a 14,000-year-old
site known as Shubayqa 1 in Jordan’s Black Desert. The inhabitants, who were
hunter-gatherers, left their home in a hurry, with the contents of their most
recent meal still smoldering in two sunken fireplaces (one pictured).
With the help of a
scanning electron microscope, which uses a beam of electrons to return
incredibly intricate zoomed-in images, the researchers identified 24 pieces of
char that were decidedly breadlike. Though the bread’s exact grain remains
unknown, its cellular structure resembles cereal grain species such as wild
einkorn, rye, or millet, and it was likely an unleavened, flatbread. Some
pieces incorporated root starches as well.
The find is the oldest
example of bread yet discovered, the researchers report today in the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and predates the arrival of
agriculture in the region by some 4000 years. The discovery suggests knowing
how to grow grains isn’t essential to making bread from them, which could help
researchers better understand how ancient cultures met their nutritional needs.
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/07/oven-was-used-make-bread-thousands-years-agriculture
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