Um. . . no suprise. "14,000-Year-Old Piece Of Bread Rewrites The History Of Baking And Farming"

Food For Thought

14,000-Year-Old Piece Of Bread Rewrites The History Of Baking And Farming

And people are, of course, shocked and amazed.

But I'm not.

From the NPR story linked in above:

Amaia Arranz-Otaegui is an archaeobotanist from the University of Copenhagen. She was collecting dinner leftovers of the Natufians, a hunter-gatherer tribe that lived in the area more than 14,000 years ago during the Epipaleolithic time — a period between the Paleolithic and Neolithic eras.

Natufians were hunters, which one could clearly tell from the bones of gazelles, sheep and hares that littered the cooking pit. But it turns out the Natufians were bakers, too --at a time well before scientists thought it was possible.

Why did scientist think that?

Because they always think whatever people routinely do in the modern world was discovered last Tuesday.

In other words, until now we thought that our ancestors were farmers first and bakers second. But Arranz-Otaegui's breadcrumbs predate the advent of agriculture by at least 4,000 years. That means that our ancestors were bakers first —and learned to farm afterwards.

But that's never the case.

Now, with this shocking news, what does that mean for people who now eschew all breads at all costs?