It is the oldest bread ever found so far: is about 14,000 years old and was found in the Black Desert of Jordan by a group of researchers from the universities of Copenhagen, Cambridge and University College London. According to the research, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, it is a charred flatbread. Not only, therefore, our ancestors even before the Neolithic used to knead and cook, but what is really surprising is that this was already done many years before the advent of agriculture.
The birth of agriculture is in fact placed 4000 years later than the baking of that piece of bread. The authors hypothesize that it was thanks to the consumption of bread that the populations began to cultivate the plants necessary to make it, thus contributing to the agricultural revolution in the Neolithic.
From the analysis of the fragments of bread with the electron microscope it emerged that they are wild cereals :ancestors of modern cereals such as barley, spelled and oats which were ground, sieved and kneaded before being cooked.
But who is behind the making of this prehistoric focaccia? According to the researchers, it was produced by a mostly sedentary population of hunter-gatherers, called Natufians. It is possible, according to archaeologists, that due to the difficulty in making bread, this was considered a luxury food and therefore only intended for important events.
The archaeological site of the find is called Shubayqa 1 and is located in the north-east of Jordan . It was initially discovered by the British archaeologist Alison Betts in the 90s and consists of two well-preserved buildings, each containing a stone fireplace with a large circular structure. In addition to the remains of bread, chipped stones, tools, animal bones and plant remains have been identified at this site during four excavation seasons between 2012 and 2015.
Before this discovery, the oldest remains of focaccias had been found in various Neolithic sites in Europe and Turkey. Discoveries like these not only allow researchers to investigate the origin of this food and the influence it had on agriculture, but also allow us to highlight some still unknown aspects of the culinary culture of our ancestors.
References:
Amaia Arranz-Otaegui, Lara Gonzalez Carretero, Monica N. Ramsey, Dorian Q. Fuller, Tobias Richter. Archaeobotanical evidence reveals the origins of bread 14,400 years ago in northeastern Jordan. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2018; 201801071