Researchers recreate bread our ancestors relished 12,500 years ago
Thursday, 27 August 2015 - 7:09pm IST | Place: JERUSALEM | Agency: PTI
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Getty ImagesResearchers recreate a pre-historic bread that our ancestors savoured over 12,500 years ago, re-enacting a critical moment in human history that led to rise of civilisations.
Using 12,500-year-old conical mortars carved into bedrock, researchers reconstructed how our ancient ancestors processed wild barley to produce groat meals, as well as a delicacy that might be termed "proto-pita" - small loaves of coal-baked, unleavened bread.
In doing so, they re-enacted a critical moment in the rise of civilisation - the emergence of wild-grain-based nutrition, some 2,000 to 3,000 years before our hunter-gatherer forebears would establish the sedentary farming communities which were the hallmark of the "Neolithic Revolution"..
The research team conducted their study in the Late Natufian site of Huzuq Musa, located in Israel.
Most investigators agree that cereal domestication was achieved about 10,500 years ago. The study shows how groat meals and fine flour were produced from wild barley, two to three millennia before the appearance of domesticated grains. The team's field work resolved a long-standing mystery about thousands of cone-shaped hollows carved into the bedrock throughout the Southern Levant.
Assuming they were mortars used for the processing of plant food, the researchers decided to use these ancient stone tools, along with period-appropriate items such as wooden pestles, sticks and sieves, to reconstruct how the work was done, said Mordechai Kislev of Bar-Ilan University.
The experiment began by collecting the coated grains of a cereal ear from wild barley. The grains were then separated from the stalks, by beating them with a curved stick.
The conical mortars were filled with a measure of the raw grain and beaten with a wooden pestle, to make groats and flour, said team member Adiel Karty, explaining that the different-sized mortars served specific agricultural purposes.
The wider cones were used for removing the bristle that extends from the edge of the seed, while the narrower cones were used to remove grain husk, he explained. "The Natufians invented a peeling-milling machine long before the invention of machinery!" he said.
After de-husking, the grain was scooped out of the conical mortar by hand then placed into a small cup cut in the nearby bedrock. It was transferred for filtering in a small-gauge sieve.
Ofer Bar-Yosef, from Harvard University, said that the study complements nearly 80 years of research suggesting that the Natufians, although subsisting as a hunter-gatherer society, used sickles to harvest wild, almost-ripe cereals, and were capable of producing large quantities of groat meals from roasted, half green barley grain.
Moreover, the technological advance from wide to narrow cone mortars represented a major dietary change, because de-husked flour made it possible to produce the fine flour needed for bread.
The study was published in the journal Plos One.http://www.dnaindia.com/scitech/report-researchers-recreate-bread-our-ancestors-relished-12500-years-2119132
Abstract
Experimental archaeology at a Natufian site in the Southern Levant documents for the first time the use of 12,500-year-old rock-cut mortars for producing wild barley flour, some 2,000 to 3,000 years before cereal cultivation. Our reconstruction involved processing wild barley on the prehistoric threshing floor, followed by use of the conical mortars (a common feature in Natufian sites), thereby demonstrating the efficient peeling and milling of hulled grains. This discovery complements nearly 80 years of investigations suggesting that the Natufians regularly harvested almost-ripe wild cereals using sickles hafted with flint blades. Sickles had been replicated in the past and tested in the field for harvesting cereals, thusly obtaining the characteristic sheen along the edge of the hafted flint blades as found in Natufian remnants. Here we report that Natufian wide and narrow conical mortars enabled the processing of wild barley for making the groats and fine flour that provided considerable quantities of nourishment. Dishes in the Early Natufian (15,000–13,500 CalBP) were groat meals and porridge and subsequently, in the Late Natufian (13,500–11,700 CalBP), we suggest that unleavened bread made from fine flour was added. These food preparing techniques widened the dietary breadth of the sedentary Natufian hunter-gatherers, paving the way to the emergence of farming communities, the hallmark of the Neolithic Revolution.
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Citation: Eitam D, Kislev M, Karty A, Bar-Yosef O (2015) Experimental Barley Flour Production in 12,500-Year-Old Rock-Cut Mortars in Southwestern Asia. PLoS ONE 10(7): e0133306. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0133306
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0133306