Flatbread Baked 14,400 Years Ago Found in Jordan
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
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.
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Bread before agriculture.
Hmm. Agriculture because of bread?
If they were gathering and storing wild grains for later use, I can certainly see some spilled quantities here or there sprouting and setting off that big light bulb in the brain for them.
Intriguing, isn't it? And therefore this story has been all over the Interwebs. (For once a truly significant story went viral!
)
What kind of livestock did they have in those days? It's well established that dried dung was used for campfire fuel by early humans. Could this "bread" just as well be cattle or oxen patties?
A quick search places the date given in the article a few thousand years before livestock. Even if it wasn't, I'd say it's a pretty safe bet that the specialists analyzing the electron microscopy of this material can tell the difference between dung and undigested foodstuffs. I'd certainly hope so, anyway.
This story aligns well with some of the information discovered concerning the peoples living prior to the pre 8200 yr (BP) cooling, which has shown the use of stone tools as described in the article.
The climate in that area of the world has continued to move to a drier environment which has done wonders for the preservation of artifacts.
Historian Bettany Hughes has some interesting videos covering human development and civilization beginning in some of the more ancients times and progressing to some of the Greek city states. Once you find her videos it should be easy to find some covering the time period discussed in the article.
For a more clinical look at human development through the known 3 stone age periods Professor Alison Roberts, University of Birmingham (UK) has some lectures. BTW, the stone age goes back many 10s of thousands of years beyond what we were once taught. Maybe those old dates are still taught in school?
This leads to several lectures from CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny - presented by UCSD TV (Go Tritons), which goes into greater detail on many early human development topics.
Once you find vids from the folks and organizations above, a treasure trove of information is waiting.
I've watched a ton of CARTA's Human Origins content on UCTV's YouTube channel.
There's some really good stuff there.
Dear Friend D-S: Another winner.
Please keep them coming.
Enoch.