New evidence that man may have been eating bread 30,000 years ago:
Starch grains found on 30,000-year-old grinding stones suggest that prehistoric man may have dined on an early form of flat bread, contrary to his popular image as primarily a meat-eater.
The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) journal on Monday, indicate that Palaeolithic Europeans ground down plant roots similar to potatoes to make flour, which was later whisked into dough.
“It’s like a flat bread, like a pancake with just water and flour,” said Laura Longo, a researcher on the team from the Italian Institute of Prehistory and Early History.
“You make a kind of pita and cook it on the hot stone,” she said, describing how the team replicated thecooking process. The end product was “crispy like a cracker but not very tasty,” she added.
The grinding stones, each of which fit comfortably into an adult’s palm, were discovered at archaeological sites in Italy, Russia and the Czech Republic.
The researchers said their findings throw mankind’s first known use of flour back some 10,000 years, the previously oldest evidence having been found in Israel on 20,000 year-old grinding stones.
The findings may also upset fans of the Paleolithic diet, which follows earlier research that assumes early humans ate a meat-centered diet.
(via)
But… but… the earth is only 6,000 years old!!!
*sigh* I hate the media’s overreaction to these sorts of things. The article you pasted is one of the worst ones, too.
When they say “starch grains,” they don’t mean grain as in cereal grain, they mean grain as in a particle – like a grain of sand. Most of the material they found came from roots, and only a small fraction from seeds that we’d call “grain” today. And we don’t know HOW they ate that flour… all they found were sets of stones used as a sort of mortar and pestle. In theory they’d need to cook it somehow, but to make the leap from a few grain particles to “bread”? Come on.
And obviously paleolithic man was eating grains from time to time – how else would they have thought to start growing grains when agriculture developed? So I’m not entirely sure this is that groundbreaking for the general public, as cool as it might be for people in that field.
I just realized the first part of my post sounds kinda rude. I have no problem with you posting this – I just get frustrated with science writers at times. I can’t expect everyone sharing this article to have read the original paper, since most likely they’re not as big of a nerd as I am, haha. I enjoy your blog very much! =]
So now all they need to find is that the original Golden Arches were stone arches.
The Palolithic diet is good to die at 25, just like our ancestors did.
We evolved to grow up fast, reproduce like rabbits and die young.
Not many paleolithic men died of cancer or cardiovascular problems…
Living at 90+ is inherently innatural, we cannot use ‘what we evolved for’ as a guide.
The life expectancy of ancient humans like Cro Magnon is estimated to be about 30 years, but that includes a massive rate of infant death. If they survived to be five years old, then life expectancy rocketed up to 50 or 60 (we have a lot of ancient human fossils in this age range), and living to 90 would have been exceptional but probably not unheard of.
The Paleolithic started well before Cro Magnon.
This is true. But if we’re comparing the lifespans of H. sapiens to that of other species, then the influence of diet becomes a lot murkier, so I chose an H. sapiens population that had a “palaeolithic diet”. True, H. erectus tended to have a shorter life than Cro Magnons (even with the same diet), but that’s not really relevant to a discussion of modern humans.
Somebody else got hold of the actual study:
http://huntgatherlove.com/content/fun-headlines-did-paleolithic-people-eat-grains
And from there it was a small step to cake–and Modern Man.
If they don’t have bread… let them eat cake :D
The cake is a lie.
Cake is a band.
What isn’t?
If you can imagine living outdoors, year round, even in a mild climate, with an abundance of critters the likes and quantity of which we have never seen — many of which would eat you if given half a chance — I’m not surprised they’d eat whatever they could get their hands on, and that most vegetable matter needed some form of processing to be palatable.
That said, what I’m really interested in is when they invented gods.
I’m not upset in the slightest. Just curious to know what kind of roots they used and whether they would be healthful to eat. ‘Cause, y’know, I’m not a hyperbole junkie.
If they didn’t figure out to put a slice of meat between two pieces of this bread, then I’m not impressed.
The fact that we, as a species, see color is a dead giveaway that we’re not naturally evolved meat-eaters.
Stereoscopic vision is good for an arboreal animal, and a predator. It provides keen distance finding, and the ability to lock onto and track a single point of interest. Such as, say, a particularly tasty-looking bug or branch swaying in the wind, or a rabbit in the bush. But color vision is a biologically expensive adaptation that is useful only for identifying when fruit is ripe. A prey animal that is colored like it surroundings is more likely to be hidden from an eye keyed to color than, say, one keyed to shape and movement.
But what does this pseudo-intellectual rant have to do with anything?
Because this news doesn’t surprise me in the least. There’s only ever been one ‘breed’ of mankind that’s managed to thrive (in a fashion) on a meat-centered diet, and they do so because of a lack of regular vegetation, and they still suffer from cardiac-related disease.
But what does this pseudo-intellectual rant have to do with anything?
Well, at least you recognize that your rant is pseudo-intellectual.