Researchers in Jordan has found a bread that was baked 14,500 years ago! Yes, remains of a flatbread baked in a stone fireplace was discovered from a site in northeastern Jordan. The flatbread was prepared the old fashioned way with wild cereals like barley, einkorn or oats. The bread mostly unleavened also included an aquatic papyrus relative, that had been ground into flour. The sweet discovery made at a Black Desarchaeologicalical site also means that people began making bread before they started agriculture.

Details of the bread made public on Monday points out that bread-making was in existence earlier than previously known, more than 4,000 years before plant cultivation took root. According to a report in the Reuters, the flatbread was made by a culture called the Natufians. They had begun to adapt a sedentary lifestyle than follow the nomadic one.

Amaia Arranz-Otaegui, a University of Copenhagen postdoctoral researcher in archaeobotany and lead author of the research published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences said, "The presence of bread at a site of this age is exceptional. We now have to assess whether there was a relationship between bread production and the origins of agriculture,” Arranz-Otaegui said. It is possible that bread may have provided an incentive for people to take up plant cultivation and farming if it became a desirable or much-sought-after food."

The previous oldest bread was found from a 9,100-year-old site in Turkey. Arranz-Otaegui said that until now origins of age-old bread had been associated with early farming societies. Evidence found from the site indicated the Natufians had a meat and plant-based diet.

Arranz-Otaegui said the researchers have begun the process of trying to reproduce the bread and also succeeded in making flour using the tubers include int he recipe. Arranz-Otaegui said, "The taste of the tubers is quite gritty and salty. But it is a bit sweet as well."

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jul 17, 2018 12:58 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).