26 ms·

14,400-year-old flatbread remains that predate known agriculture

291 points by vinayan3 8y ago

flukus 8y ago
Perhaps the assumption that bread is a product of agriculture is the wrong way around? If bread was already being consumed then it would make sense to want a more centralized and reliable source of grain.
ryanmercer 8y ago
*predate known agricultural settlements.
- contingencies 8y ago
  It seems pretty clear that a rigid binary classification of societies in to settled/agricultural and nomadic/hunter-gatherer is false. For example: What constitutes a settlement anyway? Just how long does it need to be in use before it's a settlement instead of a camp? Does regular seasonal use constitute permanence? In many hunter gatherer societies agriculture is documented. What about if shelter is natural (rock shelter), mobile (yurts or boats) or unnecessary (good weather)? This is all part of a general ancient history rethink that I think it's fair to say is going on. We've figured out that ancient history is far more nuanced than many 20th century Western history scholars gave it credit for, and modern archaeology and genetics in particular are only now showing us the scale of our misconceptions. Example areas of complete rethink: peopling of the Americas, continued diversity (and interbreeding with) non-homo-sapiens, speed and breadth of human diffusion, speed and breadth of technology invention and diffusion in pre-historic peoples.
  - ryanmercer 8y ago
    >It seems pretty clear that a rigid binary classification of societies in to settled/agricultural and nomadic/hunter-gatherer is false. Here's the problem, there's an established 'story' and if someone tries to go against that established 'story' about human history, they will find themselves unemployable. They will not be permitted to be a part of digs, they will not be able to find grant money, they will not be able to find a university that will take them in. If someone finds something that even adds doubt it's immediately labeled a misinterpretation, a fake, some natural process that resembles human activity etc. Add to that if you go back to Toba supervolcano 70,000 years ago you wipe out most of the human population at the time with some estimates getting you into a few thousand humans across the entire planet which obviously could have ended societies that did exist at the time and were not nomadic, if they were using largely grass and wood for their construction, a supervolcano erupting could have quickly led to using construction materials for heat source, as a source of food for any animals that were struggling to find food etc. Even small settlements spread out might go undiscovered by archaeologists for centuries. If you look at Kenya’s Olorgesailie Basin there's potentially evidence of tool building 320,000 years ago. That right there kinda takes everything and goes "yeahhhhhhhhhh we're probably wrong" https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/archaeology/a19447825/olorgesailie-kenya-tools-archaeology/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/archaeology/a194478... Telling me we had tools 320k years ago but we didn't figure out agriculture until 12-14k years ago? Heh. Ssssssure. I urge anyone to go read about the history of archaeology, it's only until extremely recently (the mid 1900's) that it even started to become a proper science and even then most of the labor was untrained volunteer and many an important site were discovered by people native to the area before properly trained people were notified and brought in. Even recorded history is extremely suspect until very modern times. Some will argue it didn't become reliable until the 11th-12th century but we still see instances of stuff unreliable past that. Some firmly believe Joan of Arc is a fabrication for example, which calls 15th century 'history' into question... when someone questions her existence with logic they are quickly called a 'revisionist' and considered a nutjob though. The fact that 'revisionist' and 'historical revisionism' exist as concepts are troubling because they are often used disparagingly of anyone that questions the 'official story' where in other disciplines it would be considered healthy skepticism.
    - aldoushuxley001 8y ago
      Have any good reads on this? Sounds like granting agencies and science funding in general are favouring a specific story about human history, but would like to read more.
      - ryanmercer 8y ago
        Here's a brief little crash course on archaeology https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/archaeology/archaeology.htm https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/archae... Here's a decent timeline of archaeology, see how it only goes back to 1780 https://www.ancient.eu/timeline/Archaeology/ https://www.ancient.eu/timeline/Archaeology/ There are some common historical inaccuracies in this article, like the fact we were taught Columbus discovered America as recently as the early 90's in my case (class of '13) despite them knowing damn well he didn't, Newton and gravity, how slavery is conveniently never mentioned in the North, etc https://www.thisisinsider.com/myths-lies-learned-in-school-wrong-facts-2017-5 https://www.thisisinsider.com/myths-lies-learned-in-school-w... For Columbus in-particular the Oatmeal did a decent, but over the top, write up some years back http://theoatmeal.com/comics/columbus_day http://theoatmeal.com/comics/columbus_day I was literally taught in the early 90's that they believed the earth was flat and that Columbus was brave enough to attempt to sail to India and that everyone thought he was crazy and would fall off the side of the world. This was in a public school, 20 something years ago. Yet we know there were colonies, that were eventually abandoned, and one was found in the 1960's in Newfoundland. Hell look to certain countries in the middle-east and there are millions that flat out think the holocaust never happened, people the world around that think the moon landings were on a sound stage, people trying to currently change history with the 'Mandela Effect' (Berenstein or Berenstain Bears?). The history of paleontology is a good rabbit hole too, start with the wiki https://www.wikiwand.com/en/History_of_paleontology https://www.wikiwand.com/en/History_of_paleontology As far as people being blackballed, that's mostly just people coming forward after they allege it has happened or refusing to be part of something for fear of it although you can go read a lot about Zahi Hawass https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Zahi_Hawass https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Zahi_Hawass and see where he was pretty damn nutty about creating his own narrative of Egyptian history for example "Hawass has been accused of domineering behaviour, forbidding archaeologists to announce their own findings, and courting the media for his own gain after they were denied access to archaeological sites because, according to Hawass, they were too amateurish." Zahi also strongly fought against any western archaeologists that wanted to question the timeline for the great pyramid and the Sphinx, flat out refusing their entry into the country in some instances and like when they drilled through the 'hidden door' in the great pyramid after jumping through all kinds of hoops and finding another door not farther up he flat out refused to let them drill through it. I also recall Zahi having hieroglyphics at one site, that there are black and white photos of, covered in plaster but I can't seem to find what site it was. I distinctly remember seeing side by side photos, the period black and white next to a modern photo showing extensive plasterwork having been added, allegedly to 'protect' the site (bit weird, no other archaeologists seem to do that at ancient sites). There are also anomalies like these https://www.cnn.com/style/article/ancient-roman-coins-japan/index.html https://www.cnn.com/style/article/ancient-roman-coins-japan/... https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2117117/mystery-over-tonnes-ancient-coins-found-buried-chinese-village https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2117117/myst... https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Kensington_Runestone https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Kensington_Runestone https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Maine_penny https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Maine_penny https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Beardmore_Relics https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Beardmore_Relics Etc. Out of place artifacts are interesting when not blatantly fakes https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Out-of-place_artifact https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Out-of-place_artifact
  - imbokodo 8y ago
    First of all, this finding can be incorrect. It can be misdated, they may have made a mistake about the grain being processed into bread. Even if they are 100% right, it doesn't really upend anything majorly. It just means what it says - hunter-gatherers turned the grains they gathered into bread 5000 years earlier than we thought. Any how, the Natufians and Chinese are thought to be the first two cultures to become agricultural. What you're talking about is 20/20 hindsight. You're living in a world with self-driving cars and Mars space probes and croissants and corn and looking back with that lens. There were innumerable barriers entering into agriculture (and not only barriers, but most hunter-gatherer bands preferred roaming around their territory as opposed to remaining in one place all the time and doing the same thing every day). We did not have corn and wheat and domesticated animals and oxen and crop rotation. Infectious diseases were as much a problem as when the New World's indigenous societies encountered Europeans. Anthropologists say the Neolithic revolution was dramatic because it was dramatic. It was a complete transformation of society - more socially transformative than anything that has happened in the past 30000 years.
- megaman22 8y ago
  It seems pretty obvious that what we know about is the barest sliver of what was actually going on tens of thousands of years ago. If nothing else, look at historical sea levels through the fluctuations caused by the ice ages. Vast areas that are currently at the bottom of the oceans were dry land, most famously the Bering land bridge and Doggerland, but huge, huge areas all over the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland https://www.deviantart.com/atlas-v7x/art/Coastlines-of-the-Ice-Age-685023258 https://www.deviantart.com/atlas-v7x/art/Coastlines-of-the-I... Even in recorded history, terrain is much more malleable than you might expect - rivers changing their course, sometimes wildly, is not especially uncommon. For instance, it is well attested that the Yellow River has changed course such that it has reached the sea both north and south of Shandong in various eras. http://factsanddetails.com/media/2/20090526-history-Yellow-River%20Nolls.jpg http://factsanddetails.com/media/2/20090526-history-Yellow-R...
  - snapdangle 8y ago
    "It seems pretty obvious that what we know about is the barest sliver of what was actually going on tens of thousands of years ago." It doesn't seem to be obvious to most highly educated people I know. From their perspective, the history of humanity might as well be only 5,000 years old, they rarely open up to any kind of interest in the fact that ancient civilizations from 3K-5K BC considered _their own civilizations_ to be degraded forms of much earlier civilizations. It is also completely off the boards to discuss the potential of rapid techtonic shifts periodically erasing human societies. There are quite a few underwater cities in ruins, and of course myths and legends of even larger ones. But they don't get much play. Importantly, cultures with oral traditions are much more capable of recording accurately details from 10,000+ years ago: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/australian-stories-capture-10000-year-old-climate-history-180954030/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/australian-stories...
    - selestify 8y ago
      > ancient civilizations from 3K-5K BC considered _their own civilizations_ to be degraded forms of much earlier civilizations That is fascinating. Which civilizations were these, and where can I read about them? Did they think that because there were civilizational collapses earlier in human history?
JohnJamesRambo 8y ago
Paleo maximalists currently on suicide watch as their foundations are being shaken. Flatbread may have crossed the lips of prehistoric man and not just meat and berries.
- breadAndWater 8y ago
  Oh, I wouldn't take it that far. You can always take it back to primate diets, and evolve forward until humans emerge, and there you'll find an era for which the concept still rings true.
- vinayan3 8y ago
  Only one settlement so far was found to have flat bread. So Paleo people's beliefs aren't that shaken.
iambateman 8y ago
In other words, everybody really does like pizza.
- mirimir 8y ago
  Cheese, you say they had cheese! Damn.
  - zhte415 8y ago
    Quite probably. Cheese and milk products are nutritionally dense. On Food and Cooking documents milk producing 'Bos primigenius' (cow) at 6ft tall 8000 years BCE, with sheep and goats also used for milk and cheese production at that time. Cheese would have probably been easier than bread!
    - mirimir 8y ago
      OK, I'm convinced. They had pizza. Maybe with some wild oregano.
grumpwagon 8y ago
Send them to this guy, he'll eat them: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2I6Et1JkidnnbWgJFiMeHA/featured https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2I6Et1JkidnnbWgJFiMeHA/fea...
- booleandilemma 8y ago
  I love that guy! Mmm...that tastes...disgusting...I’m going to eat some more...
- ryanmercer 8y ago
  Heh, I just spent a month watching all of Steve's videos. He's... he's brave. In one he has 50-60-year-old open can of jam and he eats some "I hope I don't get botulism, I don't have insurance". and then takes a few more bites...
AgentOrange1234 8y ago
Slightly past the 5 second rule :(
narrator 8y ago
Since this doesn't conform to the pre-existing theory of the development of agriculture I expect it to go poof and disappear in a puff of logic any minute now.
mirimir 8y ago
> “Nobody had found any direct evidence for production of bread, so the fact that bread predates agriculture is kind of stunning,” says Tobias Richter, a University of Copenhagen archaeologist who co-authored the paper. “Because making bread is quite labor-intensive, and you don’t necessarily get a huge return for it. So it doesn’t seem like an economical thing to do.” That’s because breadmaking doesn’t just involve baking: Back then, it would have also involved kneading, grinding cereals into fine grains, and dehusking plants. But why would agriculture have developed, if people were't cooking the stuff? It's true that making bread involves more work than just boiling grain. But bread also serves as ready-to-eat storage. As does beer. And I can imagine how both developed more-or-less accidentally from leftover boiled grain.
- Isamu 8y ago
  > “Nobody had found any direct evidence for production of bread I think it is clear with this "flatbread" that we are seeing evidence for proto-pizza delivery. They may yet turn up what amount to coupons, perhaps as notches on sticks, or perhaps a receipt or change.
- rch 8y ago
  How Beer Gave Us Civilization https://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/opinion/sunday/how-beer-gave-us-civilization.html https://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/opinion/sunday/how-beer-g...
  - mirimir 8y ago
    That's a great article, for sure. But back in the day, it's arguable that beer was mainly for grain preservation. It's very hard to get wasted on low-EtOH beer. Which is what early beers would have been.
    - lostlogin 8y ago
      Chicha in Peru seems to be up to about 3%, which isn’t strong but presumably you could get drunk without too much suffering.
itchyjunk 8y ago
How accurate can these dating be? Can you really pin down burnt bread to 14.5k years? Maybe this was ritualistic. I don't know if you can infer that they regularly ate bread. Maybe some peganistic ritual or burial ritual had bread involved. Grain yield pre agriculture is supposed to be really low. So low that there are hypothesis claiming that it was used to brew beer and eating the grain directly wouldn't be viable for the tribe. I guess we'll wait and see as more researchers chimes into this.
- muricula 8y ago
  This is a classic use case for carbon 14 dating, so they probably used that. A quick glance at Wikipedia says that it’s pretty reliable for organic substances up to 50k years ago. Dating older rocks will often require lead uranium dating or other interesting radioactive elements. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating
crazy_monkey 8y ago
Maybe they ate Twinkies left over from a previous civilization?
abakker 8y ago
Is bread paleo now?
psergeant 8y ago
OMFG BREAD IS PALEO NOW! My life just got better
- king_nothing 8y ago
  Paleo Celiac must’ve really been the shits.
  - sctb 8y ago
    Since most of your posts lately have been like this, we've banned the account.
- foobar1962 8y ago
  This was my thought too -- at least about Paleo diet proponents rejecting grains. IMHO these early people were smart enough to work out ways to eat things that were available to them. They probably had cooking with heat, boiling in water, grinding with stone, and probably worked out using salted water for preservation, and kept the spoiled food that had random yeast that tasted good and used it for culture. Rice is a soft grain and can be eaten whole. Grains like wheat are HARD and need grinding to be edible. The hard grains keep well, so there was a big incentive to work out how to use them. A tribe that got it right probably had quite an advantage. The movie "10,000" works on this idea.
  - hutzlibu 8y ago
    "Grains like wheat are HARD " But wheat did not existed back then. And the wild grains I know, are edible with your teeth ...
    - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
      Hard grains presumably are protected against bugs and so could be grown/stored without being eaten (as much) by other creatures - giving the advantage to tool users who can smash them open.
    - kaybe 8y ago
king_nothing 8y ago
Goddamn Norwegians, I knew that crispbread was really 14,000 years old.
bayesian_horse 8y ago
That's how the earliest bread winners brought home the dough.
coldtea 8y ago
"That predate the prevalent half-assed educated guesses about when agriculture started, similar to many other assumptions about the ancient and pre-historic world that we have to revise every few years with new discoveries" would be a better title... Edit: Downvotes as if the comment is controversial? Here is some food for thought: https://www.techtimes.com/articles/71133/20150722/discovery-shows-origins-of-agriculture-twice-as-old-as-previously-thought.htm https://www.techtimes.com/articles/71133/20150722/discovery-... http://thedailyjournalist.com/scientia/the-origins-of-chinese-agriculture-date-older-than-previously-thought/ http://thedailyjournalist.com/scientia/the-origins-of-chines... https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/07/15/485722228/where-did-agriculture-begin-oh-boy-its-complicated https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/07/15/485722228/wh... https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150722144709.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150722144709.h... https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/08/evidence-that-humans-had-farms-30000-years-earlier-than-previously-thought/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/08/evidence-that-humans... http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0131422 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.... http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/rice-farming-in-india-much-older-than-thought-used-as-summer-crop-by-indus-civilisation http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/rice-farming-in-india-muc...
- peterwwillis 8y ago
  They're "half-assed" guesses in the same sense that every scientific discipline has been proven inaccurate as understanding of it evolved. Give us a few hundred more years of digging in the sand and we'll have some better theories.
basicplus2 8y ago
<“Nobody had found any direct evidence for production of bread, so the fact that bread predates agriculture is kind of stunning,” says Tobias Richter> Australian Aboriginies where making bread from native grasses for many thousands years, finely ground with stones, toxins washed out and cooked on hot coals and stones .. not a Seeminly well informed professor
dalbasal 8y ago
Nothing to do with bread but... Over the last couple of decades, this 10k-15k ybp period has gotten a lot more interesting. Especially to us romantics, who always want origins to be more ancient and mysterious. The Natufian Culture now has a lot of sites. Everything from proof of a predominantly hunter gatherer diet to a full scale sedentary city, 9,000 year old Jericho. We even know they particularly enjoyed eating cat, and may have domesticated them for food. Even more remarkable is the progress in southeastern Turkey. Gobleki Tepeh is a find on such a scale that it challenges archeologists to re-narrate the neolithic revolution. Many think that it reverses the old narrative: Agriculture lead to caloric surpluses, permanent settlements, cities, organised religions, kings, advanced art, complex mythology... Maybe an organised religion crowned the first god-kings, designated specialised societal roles, built temples, then cities, and invented agriculture to support them. Near Gobleki Tepeh is Catal Huyuk, a residential "city" archeologically and temporally similar Jericho. It appears to have been built after Gobleki Tepeh, a more "ritualistic" site. Perhaps archeologists should be looking for ancient temple sites, predating Jericho. Perhaps the Egyptian pattern is to be expected. First, giant ritualistic projects are undertaken. Politics appears to be simple, the king is a god. People do what he says. Complexity comes later. Maybe this is normal. Maybe modes of production follow from modes of culture, to put it in 19th century terms. Egypt's old kingdom were the the great builders. Out of "nowhere" they suddenly take on massive works, million man-year projects. The middle & new kingdoms were more advanced politically, agriculturally, economically & militarily. But, the scale of ritualistic sites declined. They still had great temples, and fine art keeps progressing. Literature proliferates. Law advances. But, the amount of labour dedicated to pure ritual seems to peak near the "beginning." It is a fascinating period. The middle east definitely has its roots here. Keep up the good work archeologists. We appreciate it, us spectators.
- barking 8y ago
  Why would anyone write ybp instead of ago? Edit: OK, you'd need to say years ago but still, is this another part of the dropping the AD and BC tendency?
  - dalbasal 8y ago
    erm... IDK... AFAIK, YBP is used commonly in articles talking about this period. I guess having a 0 point 2018 years in the past is clunkier, and we're used to marking years with an acronym. We use a lot more acronyms these days, generally. The better ones can be guessed from context. I personally don't mind the BC/AD, for iron age and later. It's actually convenient that year 0 corresponds roughly to the beginning of Rome's height.
jlebrech 8y ago
it was invented by the elon musk of bread, after he sold enough bread he made a mega factory to produce enough grain for his operation.
piccolbo 8y ago
One thing that fascinates me about archeology is how they would come up with new conclusions based on a single observation. Quite the smallest sample size of any natural science I can think of, only thing I can compare to is the case study in medicine and psychoanalysis. One case, but very intensely studied.

291 points by vinayan3 8y ago

Perhaps the assumption that bread is a product of agriculture is the wrong way around? If bread was already being consumed then it would make sense to want a more centralized and reliable source of grain.

ryanmercer 8y ago

*predate known agricultural settlements.

contingencies 8y ago
It seems pretty clear that a rigid binary classification of societies in to settled/agricultural and nomadic/hunter-gatherer is false. For example: What constitutes a settlement anyway? Just how long does it need to be in use before it's a settlement instead of a camp? Does regular seasonal use constitute permanence? In many hunter gatherer societies agriculture is documented. What about if shelter is natural (rock shelter), mobile (yurts or boats) or unnecessary (good weather)? This is all part of a general ancient history rethink that I think it's fair to say is going on. We've figured out that ancient history is far more nuanced than many 20th century Western history scholars gave it credit for, and modern archaeology and genetics in particular are only now showing us the scale of our misconceptions. Example areas of complete rethink: peopling of the Americas, continued diversity (and interbreeding with) non-homo-sapiens, speed and breadth of human diffusion, speed and breadth of technology invention and diffusion in pre-historic peoples.
- ryanmercer 8y ago
  >It seems pretty clear that a rigid binary classification of societies in to settled/agricultural and nomadic/hunter-gatherer is false. Here's the problem, there's an established 'story' and if someone tries to go against that established 'story' about human history, they will find themselves unemployable. They will not be permitted to be a part of digs, they will not be able to find grant money, they will not be able to find a university that will take them in. If someone finds something that even adds doubt it's immediately labeled a misinterpretation, a fake, some natural process that resembles human activity etc. Add to that if you go back to Toba supervolcano 70,000 years ago you wipe out most of the human population at the time with some estimates getting you into a few thousand humans across the entire planet which obviously could have ended societies that did exist at the time and were not nomadic, if they were using largely grass and wood for their construction, a supervolcano erupting could have quickly led to using construction materials for heat source, as a source of food for any animals that were struggling to find food etc. Even small settlements spread out might go undiscovered by archaeologists for centuries. If you look at Kenya’s Olorgesailie Basin there's potentially evidence of tool building 320,000 years ago. That right there kinda takes everything and goes "yeahhhhhhhhhh we're probably wrong" https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/archaeology/a19447825/olorgesailie-kenya-tools-archaeology/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/archaeology/a194478... Telling me we had tools 320k years ago but we didn't figure out agriculture until 12-14k years ago? Heh. Ssssssure. I urge anyone to go read about the history of archaeology, it's only until extremely recently (the mid 1900's) that it even started to become a proper science and even then most of the labor was untrained volunteer and many an important site were discovered by people native to the area before properly trained people were notified and brought in. Even recorded history is extremely suspect until very modern times. Some will argue it didn't become reliable until the 11th-12th century but we still see instances of stuff unreliable past that. Some firmly believe Joan of Arc is a fabrication for example, which calls 15th century 'history' into question... when someone questions her existence with logic they are quickly called a 'revisionist' and considered a nutjob though. The fact that 'revisionist' and 'historical revisionism' exist as concepts are troubling because they are often used disparagingly of anyone that questions the 'official story' where in other disciplines it would be considered healthy skepticism.
  - aldoushuxley001 8y ago
    Have any good reads on this? Sounds like granting agencies and science funding in general are favouring a specific story about human history, but would like to read more.
    - ryanmercer 8y ago
      Here's a brief little crash course on archaeology https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/archaeology/archaeology.htm https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/archae... Here's a decent timeline of archaeology, see how it only goes back to 1780 https://www.ancient.eu/timeline/Archaeology/ https://www.ancient.eu/timeline/Archaeology/ There are some common historical inaccuracies in this article, like the fact we were taught Columbus discovered America as recently as the early 90's in my case (class of '13) despite them knowing damn well he didn't, Newton and gravity, how slavery is conveniently never mentioned in the North, etc https://www.thisisinsider.com/myths-lies-learned-in-school-wrong-facts-2017-5 https://www.thisisinsider.com/myths-lies-learned-in-school-w... For Columbus in-particular the Oatmeal did a decent, but over the top, write up some years back http://theoatmeal.com/comics/columbus_day http://theoatmeal.com/comics/columbus_day I was literally taught in the early 90's that they believed the earth was flat and that Columbus was brave enough to attempt to sail to India and that everyone thought he was crazy and would fall off the side of the world. This was in a public school, 20 something years ago. Yet we know there were colonies, that were eventually abandoned, and one was found in the 1960's in Newfoundland. Hell look to certain countries in the middle-east and there are millions that flat out think the holocaust never happened, people the world around that think the moon landings were on a sound stage, people trying to currently change history with the 'Mandela Effect' (Berenstein or Berenstain Bears?). The history of paleontology is a good rabbit hole too, start with the wiki https://www.wikiwand.com/en/History_of_paleontology https://www.wikiwand.com/en/History_of_paleontology As far as people being blackballed, that's mostly just people coming forward after they allege it has happened or refusing to be part of something for fear of it although you can go read a lot about Zahi Hawass https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Zahi_Hawass https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Zahi_Hawass and see where he was pretty damn nutty about creating his own narrative of Egyptian history for example "Hawass has been accused of domineering behaviour, forbidding archaeologists to announce their own findings, and courting the media for his own gain after they were denied access to archaeological sites because, according to Hawass, they were too amateurish." Zahi also strongly fought against any western archaeologists that wanted to question the timeline for the great pyramid and the Sphinx, flat out refusing their entry into the country in some instances and like when they drilled through the 'hidden door' in the great pyramid after jumping through all kinds of hoops and finding another door not farther up he flat out refused to let them drill through it. I also recall Zahi having hieroglyphics at one site, that there are black and white photos of, covered in plaster but I can't seem to find what site it was. I distinctly remember seeing side by side photos, the period black and white next to a modern photo showing extensive plasterwork having been added, allegedly to 'protect' the site (bit weird, no other archaeologists seem to do that at ancient sites). There are also anomalies like these https://www.cnn.com/style/article/ancient-roman-coins-japan/index.html https://www.cnn.com/style/article/ancient-roman-coins-japan/... https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2117117/mystery-over-tonnes-ancient-coins-found-buried-chinese-village https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2117117/myst... https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Kensington_Runestone https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Kensington_Runestone https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Maine_penny https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Maine_penny https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Beardmore_Relics https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Beardmore_Relics Etc. Out of place artifacts are interesting when not blatantly fakes https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Out-of-place_artifact https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Out-of-place_artifact
- imbokodo 8y ago
  First of all, this finding can be incorrect. It can be misdated, they may have made a mistake about the grain being processed into bread. Even if they are 100% right, it doesn't really upend anything majorly. It just means what it says - hunter-gatherers turned the grains they gathered into bread 5000 years earlier than we thought. Any how, the Natufians and Chinese are thought to be the first two cultures to become agricultural. What you're talking about is 20/20 hindsight. You're living in a world with self-driving cars and Mars space probes and croissants and corn and looking back with that lens. There were innumerable barriers entering into agriculture (and not only barriers, but most hunter-gatherer bands preferred roaming around their territory as opposed to remaining in one place all the time and doing the same thing every day). We did not have corn and wheat and domesticated animals and oxen and crop rotation. Infectious diseases were as much a problem as when the New World's indigenous societies encountered Europeans. Anthropologists say the Neolithic revolution was dramatic because it was dramatic. It was a complete transformation of society - more socially transformative than anything that has happened in the past 30000 years.
megaman22 8y ago
It seems pretty obvious that what we know about is the barest sliver of what was actually going on tens of thousands of years ago. If nothing else, look at historical sea levels through the fluctuations caused by the ice ages. Vast areas that are currently at the bottom of the oceans were dry land, most famously the Bering land bridge and Doggerland, but huge, huge areas all over the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland https://www.deviantart.com/atlas-v7x/art/Coastlines-of-the-Ice-Age-685023258 https://www.deviantart.com/atlas-v7x/art/Coastlines-of-the-I... Even in recorded history, terrain is much more malleable than you might expect - rivers changing their course, sometimes wildly, is not especially uncommon. For instance, it is well attested that the Yellow River has changed course such that it has reached the sea both north and south of Shandong in various eras. http://factsanddetails.com/media/2/20090526-history-Yellow-River%20Nolls.jpg http://factsanddetails.com/media/2/20090526-history-Yellow-R...
- snapdangle 8y ago
  "It seems pretty obvious that what we know about is the barest sliver of what was actually going on tens of thousands of years ago." It doesn't seem to be obvious to most highly educated people I know. From their perspective, the history of humanity might as well be only 5,000 years old, they rarely open up to any kind of interest in the fact that ancient civilizations from 3K-5K BC considered _their own civilizations_ to be degraded forms of much earlier civilizations. It is also completely off the boards to discuss the potential of rapid techtonic shifts periodically erasing human societies. There are quite a few underwater cities in ruins, and of course myths and legends of even larger ones. But they don't get much play. Importantly, cultures with oral traditions are much more capable of recording accurately details from 10,000+ years ago: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/australian-stories-capture-10000-year-old-climate-history-180954030/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/australian-stories...
  - selestify 8y ago
    > ancient civilizations from 3K-5K BC considered _their own civilizations_ to be degraded forms of much earlier civilizations That is fascinating. Which civilizations were these, and where can I read about them? Did they think that because there were civilizational collapses earlier in human history?

JohnJamesRambo 8y ago

Paleo maximalists currently on suicide watch as their foundations are being shaken. Flatbread may have crossed the lips of prehistoric man and not just meat and berries.

breadAndWater 8y ago
Oh, I wouldn't take it that far. You can always take it back to primate diets, and evolve forward until humans emerge, and there you'll find an era for which the concept still rings true.
vinayan3 8y ago
Only one settlement so far was found to have flat bread. So Paleo people's beliefs aren't that shaken.

iambateman 8y ago

In other words, everybody really does like pizza.

mirimir 8y ago
Cheese, you say they had cheese! Damn.
- zhte415 8y ago
  Quite probably. Cheese and milk products are nutritionally dense. On Food and Cooking documents milk producing 'Bos primigenius' (cow) at 6ft tall 8000 years BCE, with sheep and goats also used for milk and cheese production at that time. Cheese would have probably been easier than bread!
  - mirimir 8y ago
    OK, I'm convinced. They had pizza. Maybe with some wild oregano.

grumpwagon 8y ago

Send them to this guy, he'll eat them: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2I6Et1JkidnnbWgJFiMeHA/featured https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2I6Et1JkidnnbWgJFiMeHA/fea...

booleandilemma 8y ago
I love that guy! Mmm...that tastes...disgusting...I’m going to eat some more...
ryanmercer 8y ago
Heh, I just spent a month watching all of Steve's videos. He's... he's brave. In one he has 50-60-year-old open can of jam and he eats some "I hope I don't get botulism, I don't have insurance". and then takes a few more bites...

AgentOrange1234 8y ago

Slightly past the 5 second rule :(

narrator 8y ago

Since this doesn't conform to the pre-existing theory of the development of agriculture I expect it to go poof and disappear in a puff of logic any minute now.

mirimir 8y ago

> “Nobody had found any direct evidence for production of bread, so the fact that bread predates agriculture is kind of stunning,” says Tobias Richter, a University of Copenhagen archaeologist who co-authored the paper. “Because making bread is quite labor-intensive, and you don’t necessarily get a huge return for it. So it doesn’t seem like an economical thing to do.” That’s because breadmaking doesn’t just involve baking: Back then, it would have also involved kneading, grinding cereals into fine grains, and dehusking plants. But why would agriculture have developed, if people were't cooking the stuff? It's true that making bread involves more work than just boiling grain. But bread also serves as ready-to-eat storage. As does beer. And I can imagine how both developed more-or-less accidentally from leftover boiled grain.

Isamu 8y ago
> “Nobody had found any direct evidence for production of bread I think it is clear with this "flatbread" that we are seeing evidence for proto-pizza delivery. They may yet turn up what amount to coupons, perhaps as notches on sticks, or perhaps a receipt or change.
rch 8y ago
How Beer Gave Us Civilization https://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/opinion/sunday/how-beer-gave-us-civilization.html https://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/opinion/sunday/how-beer-g...
- mirimir 8y ago
  That's a great article, for sure. But back in the day, it's arguable that beer was mainly for grain preservation. It's very hard to get wasted on low-EtOH beer. Which is what early beers would have been.
  - lostlogin 8y ago
    Chicha in Peru seems to be up to about 3%, which isn’t strong but presumably you could get drunk without too much suffering.

itchyjunk 8y ago

How accurate can these dating be? Can you really pin down burnt bread to 14.5k years? Maybe this was ritualistic. I don't know if you can infer that they regularly ate bread. Maybe some peganistic ritual or burial ritual had bread involved. Grain yield pre agriculture is supposed to be really low. So low that there are hypothesis claiming that it was used to brew beer and eating the grain directly wouldn't be viable for the tribe. I guess we'll wait and see as more researchers chimes into this.

muricula 8y ago
This is a classic use case for carbon 14 dating, so they probably used that. A quick glance at Wikipedia says that it’s pretty reliable for organic substances up to 50k years ago. Dating older rocks will often require lead uranium dating or other interesting radioactive elements. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating

crazy_monkey 8y ago

Maybe they ate Twinkies left over from a previous civilization?

abakker 8y ago

Is bread paleo now?

psergeant 8y ago

OMFG BREAD IS PALEO NOW! My life just got better

king_nothing 8y ago
Paleo Celiac must’ve really been the shits.
- sctb 8y ago
  Since most of your posts lately have been like this, we've banned the account.
foobar1962 8y ago
This was my thought too -- at least about Paleo diet proponents rejecting grains. IMHO these early people were smart enough to work out ways to eat things that were available to them. They probably had cooking with heat, boiling in water, grinding with stone, and probably worked out using salted water for preservation, and kept the spoiled food that had random yeast that tasted good and used it for culture. Rice is a soft grain and can be eaten whole. Grains like wheat are HARD and need grinding to be edible. The hard grains keep well, so there was a big incentive to work out how to use them. A tribe that got it right probably had quite an advantage. The movie "10,000" works on this idea.
- hutzlibu 8y ago
  "Grains like wheat are HARD " But wheat did not existed back then. And the wild grains I know, are edible with your teeth ...
  - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
    Hard grains presumably are protected against bugs and so could be grown/stored without being eaten (as much) by other creatures - giving the advantage to tool users who can smash them open.
  - kaybe 8y ago

king_nothing 8y ago

Goddamn Norwegians, I knew that crispbread was really 14,000 years old.

bayesian_horse 8y ago

That's how the earliest bread winners brought home the dough.

coldtea 8y ago

"That predate the prevalent half-assed educated guesses about when agriculture started, similar to many other assumptions about the ancient and pre-historic world that we have to revise every few years with new discoveries" would be a better title... Edit: Downvotes as if the comment is controversial? Here is some food for thought: https://www.techtimes.com/articles/71133/20150722/discovery-shows-origins-of-agriculture-twice-as-old-as-previously-thought.htm https://www.techtimes.com/articles/71133/20150722/discovery-... http://thedailyjournalist.com/scientia/the-origins-of-chinese-agriculture-date-older-than-previously-thought/ http://thedailyjournalist.com/scientia/the-origins-of-chines... https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/07/15/485722228/where-did-agriculture-begin-oh-boy-its-complicated https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/07/15/485722228/wh... https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150722144709.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150722144709.h... https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/08/evidence-that-humans-had-farms-30000-years-earlier-than-previously-thought/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/08/evidence-that-humans... http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0131422 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.... http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/rice-farming-in-india-much-older-than-thought-used-as-summer-crop-by-indus-civilisation http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/rice-farming-in-india-muc...

peterwwillis 8y ago
They're "half-assed" guesses in the same sense that every scientific discipline has been proven inaccurate as understanding of it evolved. Give us a few hundred more years of digging in the sand and we'll have some better theories.

basicplus2 8y ago

<“Nobody had found any direct evidence for production of bread, so the fact that bread predates agriculture is kind of stunning,” says Tobias Richter> Australian Aboriginies where making bread from native grasses for many thousands years, finely ground with stones, toxins washed out and cooked on hot coals and stones .. not a Seeminly well informed professor

dalbasal 8y ago

Nothing to do with bread but... Over the last couple of decades, this 10k-15k ybp period has gotten a lot more interesting. Especially to us romantics, who always want origins to be more ancient and mysterious. The Natufian Culture now has a lot of sites. Everything from proof of a predominantly hunter gatherer diet to a full scale sedentary city, 9,000 year old Jericho. We even know they particularly enjoyed eating cat, and may have domesticated them for food. Even more remarkable is the progress in southeastern Turkey. Gobleki Tepeh is a find on such a scale that it challenges archeologists to re-narrate the neolithic revolution. Many think that it reverses the old narrative: Agriculture lead to caloric surpluses, permanent settlements, cities, organised religions, kings, advanced art, complex mythology... Maybe an organised religion crowned the first god-kings, designated specialised societal roles, built temples, then cities, and invented agriculture to support them. Near Gobleki Tepeh is Catal Huyuk, a residential "city" archeologically and temporally similar Jericho. It appears to have been built after Gobleki Tepeh, a more "ritualistic" site. Perhaps archeologists should be looking for ancient temple sites, predating Jericho. Perhaps the Egyptian pattern is to be expected. First, giant ritualistic projects are undertaken. Politics appears to be simple, the king is a god. People do what he says. Complexity comes later. Maybe this is normal. Maybe modes of production follow from modes of culture, to put it in 19th century terms. Egypt's old kingdom were the the great builders. Out of "nowhere" they suddenly take on massive works, million man-year projects. The middle & new kingdoms were more advanced politically, agriculturally, economically & militarily. But, the scale of ritualistic sites declined. They still had great temples, and fine art keeps progressing. Literature proliferates. Law advances. But, the amount of labour dedicated to pure ritual seems to peak near the "beginning." It is a fascinating period. The middle east definitely has its roots here. Keep up the good work archeologists. We appreciate it, us spectators.

barking 8y ago
Why would anyone write ybp instead of ago? Edit: OK, you'd need to say years ago but still, is this another part of the dropping the AD and BC tendency?
- dalbasal 8y ago
  erm... IDK... AFAIK, YBP is used commonly in articles talking about this period. I guess having a 0 point 2018 years in the past is clunkier, and we're used to marking years with an acronym. We use a lot more acronyms these days, generally. The better ones can be guessed from context. I personally don't mind the BC/AD, for iron age and later. It's actually convenient that year 0 corresponds roughly to the beginning of Rome's height.

jlebrech 8y ago

it was invented by the elon musk of bread, after he sold enough bread he made a mega factory to produce enough grain for his operation.

piccolbo 8y ago

One thing that fascinates me about archeology is how they would come up with new conclusions based on a single observation. Quite the smallest sample size of any natural science I can think of, only thing I can compare to is the case study in medicine and psychoanalysis. One case, but very intensely studied.