Scientists Have Discovered The Earliest Evidence of Bread, And It's Much Older Than We Expected

io9 ^

[BenLurkin]

The people who built the ancient structure, members of what's called the Natufian culture, struggled in a "hostile environment to gain more energy from their food," said Ehud Weiss, an archaeobotanist at Bar-Ilan University in Israel who was not involved with the study. Archaeologists found the bread remains in sediment samples at a site named Shubayqa 1 in Jordan. The structure was oval with a fireplace in the center, and its builders carefully laid stones into the ground. Arranz Otaegui said she did not know whether the building was a dwelling or had other, perhaps ceremonial, purposes.

Sifting through the sediment, Arranz Otaegui noticed samples she couldn't place at first; they were not seeds, nuts or charred wood. Instead, they looked just like the crumbs that accumulate at the bottom of a toaster.

Study author and University College London graduate student Lara Gonzalez Carretero, using Natufian technology, has been experimentally re-creating the flour and dough. Pores in the samples mimicked the bubbles that appeared in the re-created bread.

...

Archaeologists knew that hunter-gatherers in this region could grind and bake food, according to Weiss. "The Shubayqa breadlike find is, however, the first of its kind," he said.

Cereal plants are high in calories. The traditional view was that early farmers domesticated those plants first, and then bakers began to turn cereals into bread.

Study author Dorian Fuller, a professor of archaeobotany at University College London, said the discovery made him question "whether domestication was really driven by caloric necessity," as has been claimed.

The Natufian people collected wild wheat and barley. An analysis of the starch in the crumbs revealed the presence of oats. But these ancient hunter-gatherers also ground a tuber called "club rush" into their bread.

[BenLurkin]

"We" who?

[BenLurkin]

Antediluvian ping

[neverevergiveup]

Was it in my cabinet?

[a fool in paradise]

how do they know that roll wasn’t rock hard when it came out of the oven to begin with?

[doorgunner69]

And It's Much Older Than We Expected

And a lot more moldy and stale, I am sure.

[chajin]

It was the yeast people could do, even if it got a rise out of some.

[dfwgator]

Well, “Make It With You” came out in 1970.

[LegendHasIt]

".... other researchers have suggested that bread and beer were consumed during Natufian feasts."

Maybe it wasn't bread, but Pretzels.

[golux]

Astonishingly, to me at least, when I was a student (not in Israel but in Chicago) I actually dated a girl named Shubayqa Breadlike. I only now came upon this post whilst searching for her on the internet. Thank you Free Republic!

[SoCal Pubbie]

You certainly have a crusty sense of humor.

[golux]

...They were not samples that could be placed at first. Not seeds, nuts or charred wood...

I'm not a food archaeologist or anything but that sounds suspiciously like Thanksgiving at my Mother in Law's.

[jdsteel]

how do they know that roll wasn’t rock hard when it came out of the oven to begin with?

Because “rock & roll” came long before “hard rock”. Of course.

[BenLurkin]

Rock and roll never dies...

[lee martell]

Unleavened bread, most likely.

[DoodleBob]

[bgill]

[SunkenCiv]

LOL

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks BenLurkin and a fool in paradise. Most of the ancient bread ever discovered was (unsurprisingly) found buried under the crud from the 79 AD eruption of Vesuvius.

[grey_whiskers]

Scientists Have Discovered The Earliest Evidence of Bread, And It's Much Older Than We Expected

Antediluvian ping

Must've been a school cafeteria...

[SunkenCiv]

A Natufian woman was doing something with a bunch of stones, wood, and wild grains; a Natufian man asked her what she was doing, and after she explained her idea, he said, "I Want To Make It With You".