Posted on 07/16/2018 9:01:11 PM PDT by 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencealert.com ...
“Arranz Otaegui said she did not know whether the building was a dwelling or had other, perhaps ceremonial, purposes.”
not a dwelling, not a ceremonial hut, how about something more basic - a bakery!
Did she have problems with yeast infections, or was she unleavened?
I think my local Subway sold me a sub the other day with bread that was much older.
Melba Toast from a recent wedding
“Based on the radiocarbon dates of charred plants in nearby fireplaces, the food scraps are about 14,400 years old.”
History... celebrates the battlefields whereon we meet our death, but scorns to speak of the plowed fields whereby we thrive; it knows the names of the king’s bastards, but cannot tell us the origin of wheat. That is the way of human folly. - Jean-Henri Fabre
Daily Bread Bump.
Beer came before bread. The ancients had their priorities straight.
Since bread has been "the staff of life" for thousands of years, I'm wondering where the people who claim to be allergic to gluten came from?
Poorly written article for general public consumption in one giant respect. Readers should not have had to look up “Natufian” to find out the area believed to have been occupied by the ancient people the artcile is talking about.
A simple phrase - [Natufian], a people that occupied an area of the Levant in the eastern Mediteranean; would have explained it.
If I were the publisher, I’d fire the editors. They surerly did not think their audience was a bunch of knowledgable archeologists.
Mr. Bezos are you listening? Yes, the article is a reprint that originally appeared in the Washington Compost.
Glad it wasn’t just me. lol
Glad it wasn’t just me. lol
Sounds like the house keeping of my college roommates.
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