Archaeologists from the Universities of Copenhagen and Cambridge, and University College London have unearthed the charred remains of a flatbread baked by Natufian hunter-gatherers 14,400 years ago. The results, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, provide the earliest empirical evidence for the production of bread, and suggest that bread production based on wild cereals may have encouraged hunter-gatherers to cultivate cereals, and thus contributed to the agricultural revolution in the Neolithic period.
One of the stone structures of the Shubayqa 1 site, Jordan; the fireplace, where the bread was found, is in the middle. Image credit: Alexis Pantos.
The archaeologists found a total of 24 charred food remains at Shubayqa 1, a Natufian hunter-gatherer site located in northeastern Jordan and dated to 14,400 years before present.
Shubayqa 1 consists of two well-preserved superimposed buildings, one of which is a semisubterranean structure with a carefully built flagstone pavement made of local basalt stones. This structure comprises exclusively Natufian deposits with a rich assemblage of chipped stones, ground stone tools, animal bones, and plant remains.
The site was found and briefly dug by Allison Bets in the 1990s, and University of Copenhagen archaeologists have conducted four excavation seasons at the site from 2012 to 2015.
“The presence of hundreds of charred food remains in the fireplaces from Shubayqa 1 is an exceptional find, and it has given us the chance to characterize 14,000-year-old food practices,” said Dr. Amaia Arranz-Otaegui, an archaeobotanist at the University of Copenhagen.
“Natufian hunter-gatherers are of particular interest to us because they lived through a transitional period when people became more sedentary and their diet began to change,” added Dr. Tobias Richter, an archaeologist at the University of Copenhagen who led the excavations at the Shubayqa 1 site.
“Flint sickle blades as well as ground stone tools found at Natufian sites in the Levant have long led archaeologists to suspect that people had begun to exploit plants in a different and perhaps more effective way.”
“But the flatbread found at Shubayqa 1 is the earliest evidence of bread making recovered so far, and it shows that baking was invented before we had plant cultivation.”
Scanning electron microscope images of bread-like remains from the Shubayqa 1 site, Jordan: (A) a sample showing the typical porous matrix of bread with small closed voids; (B) detail of an aleurone layer from a sample (at least single celled); (C) a sample showing vascular tissue, the arrow marks the xylem vessels in longitudinal section. Image credit: Arranz-Otaegui et al, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1801071115.
The analyses carried out by the team involved general description of the charred food remains (i.e., size, texture, particles, and inclusions) using low-magnification microscopy, and their examination under scanning electronic microscopy for the identification of plant particles (i.e., ingredients).
“We have established a new set of criteria to identify flatbread, dough and porridge like products in the archaeological record,” said Lara Gonzalez Carratero, a Ph.D. candidate in the Institute of Archaeology at University College London.
“Using scanning electron microscopy we identified the microstructures and particles of each charred food remain.”
“The 24 remains analyzed in this study show that wild ancestors of domesticated cereals such as barley, einkorn, and oat had been ground, sieved and kneaded prior to cooking,” Dr. Arranz-Otaegui said.
“The remains are very similar to unleavened flatbreads identified at several Neolithic and Roman sites in Europe and Turkey.”
“So we now know that bread-like products were produced long before the development of farming. The next step is to evaluate if the production and consumption of bread influenced the emergence of plant cultivation and domestication at all.”
“Bread involves labor intensive processing which includes dehusking, grinding of cereals and kneading and baking. That it was produced before farming methods suggests it was seen as special, and the desire to make more of this special food probably contributed to the decision to begin to cultivate cereals,” said Professor Dorian Fuller, also from the Institute of Archaeology at University College London.
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Amaia Arranz-Otaegui et al. Archaeobotanical evidence reveals the origins of bread 14,400 years ago in northeastern Jordan. PNAS, published online July 16, 2018; doi: 10.1073/pnas.1801071115
Source link: https://www.sci.news/archaeology/natufian-flatbread-jordan-06210.html
