14,000 year old food practices
The excavation at Shubayqa 1 has unearthed 254 examples of food remains. Charred evidence of a flatbread baked 14,400 years ago has caused researchers to confirm that baking predates the advent of agriculture by at least 4,000 years.
The findings indicate that bread production encouraged gatherer-hunters to cultivate cereals – therefore contributing to the agricultural revolution in the Neolithic period.
The research team was comprised of academics from the University of Copenhagen, University College London and the University of Cambridge.
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Dr. Amaia Arranz-Otaegui and Ali Shakaiteer sampling cereals in the Shubayqa area. Credit: Joe Roe[/caption]
From calories to culture: the evolution of eating
Nutritionally speaking, the process of making bread is entirely uneconomic. After harvesting wild cereals, the people of Shubayqa 1 had to separate the seeds, grind them down, make the dough, flatten the dough and cook it. They would have suffered a net loss of calories during the process – which suggests that the bread was not made for survival purposes. That leads us to the idea that this discovery represents a pivot in the history of human eating practices. No longer were people seeking pure nutrition from their food. For the people of Shubayqa 1, eating was now imbued with cultural, social and perhaps ideological significance. To strengthen this theory, the date and location of the flatbread places it close to the erection of the world’s oldest monumental buildings. Inside, ceremonies and rituals took place; perhaps with the first instances of socio-ideological feasting. [caption id="attachment_8846" align="aligncenter" width="500"]
One of the stone structures of the Shubayqa 1 site. The fireplace, where the bread was found, is in the middle. Credit: Alexis Pantos[/caption]
Jōmon pottery from the Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. Credit: Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties.[/caption]
Examined over a course of three years by researchers from Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden and the University of York’s BioArCh, the findings indicate that ceramics were used by our gatherer-hunter ancestors to initially store and process fish. As fishing techniques evolved and intensified, the range extended to include shellfish, freshwater and marine fish and even mammals.
Until recently, ceramic vessels were associated with the arrival of farming. This study, however, debunks that theory. We now know that pottery was a much earlier gatherer-hunter innovation, and was used for the consumption of fish.
Professor Oliver Craig, from the Department of Archaeology and Director of the BioArCh research centre at York, who led the study, said: “Our results demonstrate that pottery had a strong association with the processing of fish, irrespective of the ecological setting.”
Some of the pottery dates from the end of the Late Pleistocene period: a time when our ancestors were navigating glacial conditions. Other ceramics included in the study are from the post-glacial period, when the climate reached a level close to our current temperature, allowing pottery to be produced in a much greater quantity.
Craig continues: “Contrary to expectations, this association remained stable even after the onset of warming, including in more southerly areas, where expanding forests provided new opportunities for hunting and gathering.
“The results indicate that a broad array of fish was processed in the pottery after the end of the last Ice Age, corresponding to a period when hunter-gatherers began to settle in one place for longer periods and develop more intensive fishing strategies.
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