The bread is more than 14,000 years old, scientists believe
By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com
Archaeologists have discovered a food item in Africa they believe predates agricultural production.
The researchers found the burnt remains of flatbreads baked about 14,400 years ago, about 4,000 years before any evidence of agriculture. They found remnants of 24 bread items in Jordan’s Black Desert between 2012 and 2015. The breads contained wheat, barley, oats and club-rush tubers.
Prior to this discovery, scientists traced the earliest bread discovery back 9,000 years in Turkey.
The most recent findings come from a Natufian gathering site. The Natufians were known for their stationary lifestyle rather than nomadic way of life.
A discovery of this magnitude opens discussions about historic agricultural practices, said Amaia Arranz-Otaegui, a University of Copenhagen postdoctoral researcher and author of a report on the findings.
“The remains are very similar to unleavened flatbreads identified at several Neolithic and Roman sites in Europe and Turkey,” she said in a statement yesterday. “So now we know that bread-like products were produced long before the development of agriculture.
“The next step is to evaluate if the production and consumption of bread influenced the emergence of plant cultivation and domestication at all.”
The bread may have been baked for honoured guests.
The Natufians ground, sieved and kneaded the ingredients prior to baking, the archaeologist found.
That kind of work would have been reserved for special occasions, the researchers said.
The production “could have been related to feasting behaviour, where value-added luxury foods were employed to impress invited guests and secure prestige for the host,” the report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences said.
Amaia Arranz-Otaegui of the University of Copenhagen and Ali Shakaiteer, who is assisting researchers, collect wheat at an archaeological site in the Black Desert in Jordan. Joe Roe/Reuters photo