14,000 year-old bread discovered in Jordan

Stands of wild einkorn wheat ( T. boeoticum ) in the Karacadag mountain range. Picture taken by H. O ̈ zkan in early July 2004 

Someone burned the toast, apparently, and that's part of the reason that researchers still found bits of it in 14,400 year-old ovens in Shubayqa 1, a hunter-gatherer archaeological site in northeastern Jordan.  Headlines on July 16, 2018 described the study about the oldest bread known, led by Amaia Arranz-Otaegu from the University of Copenhagen. Turning most beliefs about agriculture and society on their heads,  it showed that our ancestors baked bread with einkorn, a wild wheat, thousands of years before the first cultivated fields.

Scientists already knew that people managed existing stands of einkorn (wheat) and many other plants, that they harvested and stored grains, that they ground grains, and that they made them into flat cakes that they cooked, long before they began to grow wheat in fields. Archaeologists have discovered grinding tools with grain fragments in Mozambique from 105,000 years ago; from Australia about 50,000 years ago; and from several places in Europe about 33,000 years ago. Shubayqa 1 is the first site, however, to have the burnt bread in the hearth.

Australian Aboriginal grindstone, about 30,000 years old.

Even Paleolithic hunters and gatherers had a good reason to go through the laborious process of harvesting grains and tubers, and preparing the bread. Grinding and cooking plants allows people to gain substantially more energy from them than from the raw ingredients.  Some archaeologists think that the bread discovered at Shubayqa 1, however, may have taken even more energy to make than it gave back in nutrition, in part because it was so hard to gather wild wheat seeds.

Professor Dorian Fuller at the Institute of Archaeology in London, a co-author of the report, said that the bakers might have intended the bread for religious ceremonies, which would justify the extra work. After all, the bread was in a well-made stone building with flat floors, built-in hearths, and other fragments of food from the long-ago feast. Dr. Fuller said, "This discovery . . . reveals that people . . . had begun to consume food for social, cultural, and potentially ideological reasons."

Dr. Fuller's hypothesis finds strands of support in other wheat-related discoveries in the Middle East. People had been cooking and eating wheat at least 23,000 years before the present, and nearly 10,000 years before the bread at Shubayqa 1. The earliest evidence so far (new discoveries are made every year) is from the Ohalo II site, about 23,000 years ago, on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. Charred seeds of emmer (another ancient form of wheat) were found in a settlement that contained six huts, six open air hearths, and a grave.

Three thousand years after Shubayqa 1, the first fields of cultivated grains were einkorn and emmer  discovered near the temples at Gobekli Tepe in southeast Turkey. Archaeologists there hypothesized that the hunter-gatherers who built them started planting wheat so that they could be close to their places of celebration and burials.

A modern version of Australian Aboriginal seed bread, from Gurandgi Munjie group.

Scanning electron microscopes allowed researchers to analyze 24 fragments of the several hundred pieces of bread. Most of them (75%) were made only from einkorn, further supporting the idea that the people of the area valued wheat above other grains. The gluten-rich seeds would make flatbreads that were 1/4 inch-thick, more delicate and perhaps better-tasting than those  made of oats, barley and ground tubers from sedges.

                                        Flat bread -- naan (TWC, 5-19-2012)

This bread was baked near the end of the Upper Paleolithic era, which started about 50,000 years ago and ended with the beginning of agriculture around 10,000 years ago. It suggests that the Paleo diet may need some revision.  How long now, until a recipe comes out for the "real" Paleo bread, and people can return to enjoying the food of their ancestors?

               The Shubayqa 1 site, with oven where researchers discovered ancient bread.

Why wheat?

Wheat field, near Walla Walla, Washington, June 2015 [Photo by Hanna Nelson].

Why Wheat? 

      That's what people frown and say when I tell them I've been working on a book about wheat. Writing about wheat, they seem to feel, is like being in a museum full of Picassos and Rembrandts, and Giottos, and talking about canvas rather than the paintings. You could write about so many wonderful and delicious foods made from wheat – Bread. Or cakes. Or flatbreads. But . . .  wheat?

I’m writing about wheat, because the canvas has its own intrigue. Wheat seduced us into building villages, then cities, then empires. It enticed us into settling down, promising the glories of bread and beer. It made its way into our graves, our temples, our altars, becoming for Christians the very body of their God. For something that appears to be a heap of brown seeds, a cup full of bland powder, it has profoundly shaped the world in which we live.

Wheat field in Hungary (July 2009).

From the standpoint of humans (other creatures have their own views), wheat is one of the most versatile plants. Beyond its varied uses as a food, it appears in paints, cosmetics, fuel, animal food, buildings, and dozens of other guises. Wheat is a sacred object and food in religions. It is the substance of hundreds of metaphors, the focus of dozens of superstitions, the cause of wars, and when made into bread, is a symbol of food itself.

                                                    Dog in wheat field, Italy.

         Because we grow wheat, we have dogs as companions --  their digestive systems adapted to eating grains early in the history of agriculture.


Cat and mouse, Arabic.

      Because we grow wheat, we have cats as sort-of companions -- they eat the rodents that come for the grain.

        Because we have grains, we have all sorts of other domesticated animals -- cows, horses -- all of which eat grains, and serve our needs for butter, bacon, beauty, and brute labor.


Wheat, the 2015 version

Back room at Tartine, Guerro Street, San Francisco, March 8, 2013 [Photo, TWCarns].

These days, wheat has come from the unnoticed background to front and center, by turns praised, vilified, and feared. The names of bread bakers -- Chad Robertson and Elisabeth Pruett at Tartine in San Francisco, Pierre and Lionel Poilane in Paris, Peter Reinhart, James Beard –  rank with the best-known chefs in the world. Artisan bread is considered a sacred calling by some, and as one of the highest forms of food by others.

A gluten-free loaf of bread.

Yet, driven by a belief that our bodies are poisoned by gluten, 30% of Americans in 2013 said that they were eating (or thinking about eating) gluten-free foods. Some thought that they should go wheat free because humans were not designed to digest grains, or they believed that current varieties of wheat were inedible. Some were concerned that they might have an allergy or disease related to wheat, or thought that a wheat-free diet was healthier, or that they would lose weight.

        It is true that about 1% of people worldwide have celiac disease (an immune system condition caused by gluten), and another 6% might have non-celiac gluten sensitivity. For those people, eating wheat or other grains with gluten, or any wheat (depending on the nature of their disease) can be harmful or life-threatening. For many others though, the doubts about wheat exemplify humanity’s changing relationship to food. 

Egyptian goddess Nuit offering a deceased man and his wife gifts of bread and water from the spirit world (Nuit is in the Tree of Life).

Thoughtful people from the earliest writers  until this day believed that the food we ate was related to our well-being, physical, mental, spiritual. As a result, people sanctified some foods and forbade others. As the bonds of religions loosened, concepts of culture and social class changed, and scientific knowledge increased. During the past 150 years or so, we have created a new set of reasons for promoting quinoa or kiwis or acai berries, and for demonizing wheat or milk or red meat.

US Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee "Food Plate" image. Grains, including wheat, 
are the basis of a healthy diet in this model.

The tools of science have encouraged us to think about food in ways that involve objective facts (or bits and pieces of facts) instead of moral strictures, religious demands or taboos, and what is acceptable in a particular culture. We enjoy the freedom to explore all sorts of new concepts. Weekly, a new bit of stunning information comes along that is related to what we eat and how our bodies react. Genetics, the environment, the microbiome both within us and outside of us, all are candidates for science and speculation. What will we find next that influences what we eat? Sunspots? Penta-quarks? And how will that affect whether we eat salads or Tootsie Rolls or crickets , , , , or wheat?

A Wheat-o-phile

      How did I stumble into wheat-o-philia? My young life with wheat, in the 1950s and 1960s was unremarkably Midwestern -- peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches were a staple, along with macaroni-and-cheese, tunafish casserole with canned peas, and pies, cakes, and cookies for special occasions.

       Years went by. I learned to cook, tried vegetarianism, traveled, had kids, and tried a low-gluten diet for a few years in the mid-1990s. Quinoa, rice, oats, and corn became staples. Suddenly, wheat went from ordinary to a thing of mystery and intrigue, an object of desire. I pored over recipes that featured wheat, read bakery menus in steamy windows, languished over artisan bread displays in supermarkets.

 Women making flatbreads in Tamuz, Iraq.   

       A book shaped itself in my imagination. It would start with the simplest of foods -- flour and water, mixed into a dough, rolled between patient hands into a ball, flattened, slapped onto hot stones or the side of a tandoori, transformed into the staff of life. The book's recipes would add oil, then sugar, then leavenings, and finally, yeast. It would delve into the origins of noodles and the world-wide penchant for wrapping fillings into won-tons, dumplings, pasties, and pies. It would quote the Song of Solomon, Hansel and Gretel's gingerbread house, The Little Red Hen, and the story of Demeter and Persephone. I made some notes, and continued on with life.

The Greek goddess Demeter giving Triptolemus wheat, and the knowledge of agriculture; her daughter, Persephone, blessing him.

       In 1997, chemo followed by a bone marrow transplant for a slow-moving leukemia intervened, and by about 1999, when my body settled down a bit and I went off drugs, I discovered that I couldn't eat quinoa, oats, rice. Most of my go-to grains and other proteins mad e me seriously ill. But I could eat wheat. The docs, after many tests, said, "We don't know exactly what happened -- you had some damage from the chemo, and it's made you sensitive to some proteins. That's your new life."  I took that as a sign that I should get busy writing the book about wheat -- accumulating research, notes, torn-out articles, and fattening files. Over the past ten years, these are growing into a book, grains of knowledge ripening and bearing fruit. 

Biscuit dough, April 26, 2014 [Photo TWCarns].

      We think about wheat in our own lunch box, but it is important in the larger world. It may be that empires are built today on the price of oil, not wheat, but the grain is still one of the three top crops grown, along with corn and rice. The price of wheat in Russia or Kansas is as important in many ways as it ever was. Wheatavore searches out answers to all of the questions about how good wheat is for you, its future as a crop, and more, and provides the answers that are available today. If, when tomorrow arrives, and new facts change how we look at  the questions, or how we answer them, Wheatavore will be there to help write the on-going history of wheat. In these pages, you will also find recipes, mythology and fairy tales, jokes and riddles, haiku, photos and paintings -- all facets of wheat's long relationship with us.

Wheat field with clouds.

Immortal wheat

    A collection of poetry, religious texts and notes about wheat:


Chicago
". . .  Hog butcher for the world
Tool maker, stacker of wheat,
Player with railroads . . ." Carl Sandberg (1916)


from The Bacchae


"Mankind possesses two supreme blessings, First of these is the goddess Demeter, or Earth -- whichever name you choose to call her by. It was she who gave to man his nourishment of grain. But after her came the son of Semele, who matched her present by inventing liquid wine as his gift to man." Euripides (circa 407 B.C.)


The Song of Solomon, 7:2


"Thy belly is like a heap of wheat set about with lilies."


From Deuteronomy, 8:3, 8:7 - 9:
" . . .  man doth not live by bread only, but by every thing that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth man live. . . . 7 For the LORD thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths, springing forth in valleys and hills; a land of wheat and barley, and vines and fig-trees and pomegranates; a land of olive-trees and honey; a land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou shalt not lack any thing in it;. . . "


Centuries of Meditations


"The corn was orient and immortal wheat, which never should be reaped, nor was ever sown. I thought it had stood from everlasting to everlasting." Thomas Traherne


The Merchant of Venice


"Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing . . .  His reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff; you shall see all day ere you find them, and when you have them, they are not worth the search."  I, i, 114 William Shakespeare


Weevily Wheat, a folk song


Weevily Wheat

From all over. This version collected by RG from an "heroic
monotone" named Alan Shulman in 1953.

I don't want none of your weevily wheat
I don't want none of your barley,
I want some flour and half an hour
To bake a cake for Charlie.

Charlie's neat and Charlie's sweet
And Charlie, he's a dandy,
He loves to hug and kiss the girls
And feed them sugar candy.

Over the river and through the trees
Over the river to Charlie,
Over the river to feed my sheep
On buckwheat cakes and barley.
Coffee grows on white oak trees
Rivers flow with brandy,
I've got a pretty little blue-eyed gal
Sweet as 'lasses candy.

Mama's gone to Harlem town
Papa's gone to Dover,
Sister's wore her slippers out
A-kickin Charlie over.

Take her by her lily-white hand
Lead her like a pigeon,
Make her dance the weevily wheat
'Til she loses her religion.