Tag: Middle-East

14,400-year-old flatbread proves baking predates agriculture by 4,000 years

Post author By Amy.Smith
Post date July 24, 2018

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. [caption id="attachment_8845" align="aligncenter" width="500"] 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]

Sedentary lifestyles lead to diet changes

The Danish Council for Independent Research has recently approved further funding for research into food production during the transition to the Neolithic period. University of Copenhagen archaeologist Tobias Richter, who led the excavations at Shubayqa 1 in Jordan, comments: “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.”

What came first: the chicken or the bread?

Professor Dorian Fuller from the UCL Institute of Archaeology says: “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.” Richter continues: “The flat bread 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. “So this evidence confirms some of our ideas. Indeed, it may be that the early and extremely time-consuming production of bread based on wild cereals may have been one of the key driving forces behind the later agricultural revolution where wild cereals were cultivated to provide more convenient sources of food.” The discovery comes shortly after new research revealed that barley spread across the world via multiple routes – suggesting human choices were made based on nutritional and perhaps cultural needs. Read more here.]]>

Tags archaeobotany, archaeology, diet, food, human evolution, Jordan, Middle-East

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Chewing the fat: gossip culture in early Neolithic food halls

Post author By Amy.Smith
Post date June 28, 2018

PloS One demonstrates that specialised food production buildings were commonplace in the world’s earliest agricultural villages. The study shows how these buildings played a key role in maintaining and enhancing community cohesion. [caption id="attachment_8777" align="aligncenter" width="500"] View of the early Neolithic communal structure at Beidha, Jordan. Credit: Prof. Cheryl Makarewicz[/caption]

Food production encourages an organised society

Prof. Cheryl Makarewicz of Kiel University and Prof. Bill Finlayson from the University of Reading have posited that the advent of food production sparked profound changes in the ways humans organised their societies. The team undertook excavations at the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B settlement of Beidha, not far from the UNESCO World Heritage site of Petra in Jordan. The very architectural fabric of early farming villages helped to shape human interaction, which was crucial during a period when farming and animal herding were in their first incarnations. Professor Makarewicz comments: “These buildings provided a focal point for the community, a place where everyday mundane activities such as preparing food and making tools could have been undertaken by several people simultaneously.” [caption id="attachment_8778" align="aligncenter" width="377"]

The Monastery, Petra, Jordan. Credit: Berthold Werner[/caption]

A place to cook, a place to chat

On top of their immediate functions, these spaces became a platform for conversation and the exchange of ideas. She continues: “These spaces were also important in that they provided a place where community members could drop by and have a chat with their neighbours. “This informal, but highly regular activity may have been all the more important in this context of increasingly large and settled populations. Community members knew information was being passed along and there was a central place to catch up on the news.”

A platform for philosophy?

The buildings have even been linked to the first hints of control and ownership in human society. “What we are also seeing here at Beidha is a really interesting example of how societies deal with managing new issues of how to access and control ownership of plant and animal resources, which might have become more contested within these increasingly populous settlements.”

The early social influence of architecture

“Also interesting is that people at Beidha dealt with these new social tensions very differently from their contemporaries to the west across the Jordan Valley,” Makarewicz adds. The research suggests that in southern Jordan, community daily practice occurred in non-residential buildings, which maintained and strengthened social structures. Conversely, nearby communities would use buildings like this for occasional, dramatic ritual practices. The researchers conclude: “There is a long history of using special-purpose architecture in the south of Jordan to structure the community, and this way of using the built environment for more than just shelter goes right back to the start of the Neolithic here. The continuation of this practice illustrates a strongly local continuity in pathways through the Neolithic revolution.”]]>

Tags food, Jordan, Middle-East, Neolithic

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Arab Revolt Takes Damascus

Post author By Daryl.Worthington
Post date September 30, 2015
No Comments on Arab Revolt Takes Damascus

Tags damascus, great arab revolt, hussein, lawrence of arabia, Middle-East, Ottoman Empire, t.e. lawrence

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New Research Reveals Why Pig-Use in Middle East Declined

Post author By Adam.Steedman.Thake
Post date March 16, 2015
1 Comment on New Research Reveals Why Pig-Use in Middle East Declined

Journal of Archaeological Research, attempts to examine why the pig disappeared from the human subsistence system in the Middle East. Redding’s research is important for our understanding of the historical reasons behind cultural practices which prohibit the consumption of pork. Wild pigs were indigenous to the Middle East and occurred throughout the area. “From archaeological faunal data, we now know that wild pigs were present in the Early Neolithic of Egypt in the Fayyum and the Nile Delta,” Redding writes in his report. These wild pigs spread and their domestication followed, with the first attempts to domesticate the animals in the Middle East occurring around 11,000 BCE. Earlier research had found that domestic pigs were common in the Fertile Crescent between 5,000 and 2,000 BCE. As pigs are not useful work animals and do not provide secondary resources such as wool or eggs, it is clear that pigs were being eaten in the area until at least the first millennium BCE. Why this changed has been a puzzle for researchers. One of the reasons why pigs did not continue being consumed in the Middle East could have been their water needs. Pigs are unable to cool themselves with sweat glands and require substantial amounts of drinking water, much more than cattle or goats. This constant need for water makes pigs “difficult to move in arid and semiarid environments, since they must be moved from water source to water source and only in cooler weather,” Redding notes. This would not have presented much of a problem, however, as pigs were used in a subsistence manner, rather than traded for profit. Redding proposes that pigs may have been replaced by another domestic animal: the chicken. Chickens would have presented a significant challenge to the continued farming of pigs, as they had competing food and labour needs. In this situation, humans would have had to make a decision between pigs and chickens. Chickens have several advantages over pigs. First, they are a more efficient source of protein than pigs; chickens require 3,500 litres of water to produce one kilo of meat, pigs require 6,000. Secondly, chickens produce eggs, an important secondary product which pigs do not offer. Third, chickens are much smaller and can thus be consumed within 24 hours; this eliminates the problem of preserving large quantities of meat in a hot climate. Finally, chickens could be used by nomads. While neither chickens nor pigs can be herded in the same way as cattle, chickens are small enough to be transported. “Under these circumstances, the chicken becomes a major protein resource,” Redding states. The chicken, therefore, provided Middle Eastern populations with a more efficient protein resource. Pigs became a redundant animal in the subsistence system, but they were not entirely replaced. “Indeed, contrary to expectations based on the religious prohibition of the pig, it never disappeared from the Middle East,” Redding concludes. For more information: www.springer.com Image courtesy of Wikimedia commons user: Fæ ]]>