FOOD Prehistoric bake-off: Recipe for oldest bread revealed [14,000 yrs ago]

[Melodi]

[I]So now actual wheat and barley bread can be traced back to Hunters and Gatherers 14,000 years ago; this combines with the much older oatcakes (I think that was about 20,000 but I don't have the information to hand; shows that Yes Virginia; hunters and gathers did cook and process GRAINS!

Of course, they were whole grains stone ground or cooked into porridge, griddle cakes or flatbreads, and they didn't eat nearly as much of the stuff as most modern people do - but as I've said before, the "Paleo" Diet may be very good for some people in terms of health, but it isn't really historical and needs another name./I]

Prehistoric bake-off: Recipe for oldest bread revealed
By Helen Briggs
BBC News

Image copyrightALEXIS PANTOS
Image caption
Plant roots were ground to add to the bread

Take flour made from wild wheat and barley, mix with the pulverised roots of plants, add water, then bake.

According to scientists, this is the recipe for the world's oldest bread, dating back more than 14,000 years.

The bake would have looked like a flatbread and tasted a bit like today's multi-grain bread, they say.

Our ancestors may have used the bread as a wrap for roasted meat. Thus, as well as being the oldest bread, it may also have been the oldest sandwich.

"This is the earliest evidence we have for what we could really call a cuisine, in that it's a mixed food product," Prof Dorian Fuller of University College London told BBC News.

"They've got flatbreads, and they've got roasted gazelle and so forth, and that's something they are then using to make a meal."

Image copyrightJOE ROE
Image caption
Ali Shakaiteer and Dr Amaia Arranz-Otaegui sampling cereals in the area where the bread was discovered

Bread has long been part of our staple diet. But little is known about the origins of bread-making.

Until now, the oldest evidence of bread came from Turkey 9,000 years ago.

The latest find, from an archaeological site in the Black Desert in Jordan, pushes back the first evidence for bread-making by more than 5,000 years.

Scientists uncovered two buildings, each containing a large circular stone fireplace within which charred bread crumbs were found.

Image copyrightALEXIS PANTOS
Image caption
Trying to turn plant roots into flour

Analysed under the microscope, the bread samples showed tell-tale signs of grinding, sieving and kneading.

Dr Amaia Arranz-Otaegui of the University of Copenhagen, who discovered the remains of the bread, said it was the last thing they expected to find at the site.

"Bread is a powerful link between our past and present food cultures," she said. "It connects us with our prehistoric ancestors."

The bread would have been made in several stages, including "grinding cereals and club-rush tubers to obtain fine flour, mixing of flour with water to produce dough, and baking the dough in the hot ashes of a fireplace or in a hot flat-stone", she explained.


Jordanian bread recipe from 14,000 years ago

Make flour from wild wheat and wild barley

Pound tubers (roots) of wild plants that grow in water (sedges or club- or bull-rushes) to a dry pulp

Mix together with water to make a batter or dough

Bake on hot stones around a fire.

The people living in the area at the time were hunter gatherers. They would have hunted gazelle and trapped smaller animals such as hares and birds.

They also foraged for plant foods such as nuts, fruits and wild cereals.

The researchers think the bread was made when people gathered together for a celebration or feast.

This happened before the advent of farming, when people started growing cereal crops and keeping animals.

Image copyrightALEXIS PANTOS
Image caption
The fireplace where the bread was found at an archaeological site known as Shubayqa 1

This raises the intriguing possibility that growing cereals for bread may have been the driving force behind farming.

"The significance of this bread is that it shows investment of extra effort into making food that has mixed ingredients," said Prof Fuller. "So, making some sort of a recipe, and that implies that bread played a special role for special occasions.[/B]

"That in turn suggests one of the possible motivations as to why people later chose to cultivate and domesticate wheat and barley, because wheat and barley were species that already had a special place in terms of special foods."

Image copyrightAMAIA ARRANZ OTAEGUI
Image caption
The crumbs were 5.7mm long by 4.4mm wide and 2.5mm thick

The bread was unleavened and would have resembled a wrap, pitta bread or chapatti.

Researchers have tried to reconstruct the recipe in the lab. They say the mixed grains gave the bread a nutty flavour, much like today's multi-grain loaves.

Lara Gonzalez Carretero of the UCL Institute of Archaeology, who is an expert on prehistoric bread, examined the 24 crumbs under an electron microscope.

"This would be a bread made of wild wheat and wild barley flour, mixed with water, and cooked on a hearth on a fireplace," she said.

"There's also the addition of wild tuber flour into it which gives a slightly nutty, bitter flavour to it."

Turkish bread recipe from 9,000 years ago

Make flour from domesticated wheat and barley

Add ground beans such as chick peas and lentils

Mix with water

Cook in an oven.
The discovery is reported in the journal PNAS.
.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-44846874

 

[night driver]

Melodi, don't forget beer as a cultivation rationale.

 

[fairywell]

Great Article. Very interesting.

 

[Freeholder]

There's no salt in that recipe?

Kathleen

 

[night driver]

For a hunter-gatherer, salt would be WAY too valuable for a bread-like concoction, IMO.

 

[Melodi]

There's no salt in that recipe?

Kathleen

Salt would have been very scarce if these really were hunters and gatherers (and not people starting to settle down) a lot of old flatbread recipes don't always have salt but people would add it if they had it (later anyway) and or eat it with products like salted butter (after people were making butter and cheese). I know Cheese is at least 7,000 years old and counting, and salt is a major preservative.

And beer, there was a theory that grains were domesticated to make beer and certainly in Mesopotamia the major reason for growing it was the beer with bread as a secondary product.

 

[Old Gray Mare]

And beer, there was a theory that grains were domesticated to make beer and certainly in Mesopotamia the major reason for growing it was the beer with bread as a secondary product.

Beer and bread are two sides of the same coin. They are made from basically the same ingredients and the yeast left over from the brewing process provided a leavening agent for the bread. The idea behind both was to pull more nutrients out of the raw ingredients and make them more digestible and palatable.

 

[SuElPo]

Thank you! That is a very interesting article.
Susan

 

[Bones]

If they'd dig around a bit more, maybe they'll find a 14000 year old jar of Smucker's and a half eaten jar of Jif.

 

[Melodi]

A friend found this for me - the difference is the article today showed they found actual bread crumbs, 30,000 years ago they just found only the grain/grain mill, so could have been bread (probably was) but could also have been porridge.

Bread was around 30,000 years ago: study
Reuters Staff

2 MIN READ

LONDON (Reuters Life!) - 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 the cooking 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.

Also known as the caveman diet, the regime frowns on carbohydrate-laden foods like bread and cereal, and modern-day adherents eat only lean meat, vegetables and fruit.

It was first popularized by the gastroenterologist Walter L. Voegtlin, whose 1975 book lauded the benefits of the hunter-gatherer diet.

https://in.reuters.com/article/us-s...d-30000-years-ago-study-idINTRE69H4FT20101018

 

[ShadowMan]

I always wonder about that moment that someone suddenly decided to create something like bread. How did they do it? What was the spark that caused them to say....."hey let's grind this up, add water and then bake it and see what happens." Especially complicated processing of various food items. I always find that interesting and very very cool.

 

[Melodi]

I always wonder about that moment that someone suddenly decided to create something like bread. How did they do it? What was the spark that caused them to say....."hey let's grind this up, add water and then bake it and see what happens." Especially complicated processing of various food items. I always find that interesting and very very cool.

Probably the first time someone dropped some porridge (grain boiled with water or broth) onto a hot stone by the fire and it made a very simple "pancake;" it probably took a lot longer to figure out things like kneading; though wild yeast would happen the first time the raw dough got left overnight to use in the morning and it "puffed up" a bit; but I suspect porridge cakes were the first bread, followed quickly by adding extra grains or plants as fillers to make them more solid and held together better.

 

[Stanb999]

Still doubt they were actually eating much grain. It's exceedingly difficult to create more calories than burned harvesting grains in the wild. So why waste the effort? To get drunk? Sure. To have hard to digest partially ground grain? Not likely. These modern archaeologists have little practical knowledge. Ever go into a field and harvest wild oats? Good luck. This leaves out the fact the excess caloric intake of grains causes many debilitating ailments than can lead to death. We do fortify flour for a reason.The beer theory is much more plausible for many factors. I know many dudes that would work all day for a bucket of home made beer even today.

 

[night driver]

A few thousand years ago the distribution of grains like oats, wheat, quinoa, amaranth may well have been VERY different from now, considering that virtually any field you choose to go into today (unless it's virgin grasslands or prairie and even some of THAT) was likely forested within the last 3-500 years....

 

[Melodi]

Well, modern hunters and gatherers tend to LOVE grains; before they were forced to settle there was a special "festival month" when the wild grains were ripe when the "men would dance" and the women spent day and night making the grain cakes.

The ladies told one of the first women anthropologists to visit that "don't be fooled it is the MEN who love this festival we hate it because all we do is work; though we do like the cakes."

People ate grain because it tasted good and is filling; it can also be dried and stored (even hunters and gatherers tend to store "caches" of food for later use); they probably didn't anywhere near what modern people eat (I'm sure they didn't) or even as much as the late stone age farmers; but they did eat some.

Another important point is like the rest of their food, it was SEASONAL; maybe not as sharply seasonal as it was in Southern Africa in the 1970's but still it isn't something you got much of all year except maybe a few dried bits.

There is another article somewhere from about 28,000 years ago in Europe where oats were found at the bottom of a pot, almost certainly made into porridge. I posted it here when it first came out so it is in the archives somewhere.

It is a total myth that Cro-Magnon people ate only meat and fat; they may have done that during the harshest part of the Winter but then caves are a great place to have storage pits for dried vegetables, fruits, and some grains.

Now the jury is still out on the Neanderthalers; it used to be believed that they only ate meat and it still looks like they largely depended on it but more recent finds have found residue from greens (salads) and other foods besides just meat.

 

[Stanb999]

Well, modern hunters and gatherers tend to LOVE grains; before they were forced to settle there was a special "festival month" when the wild grains were ripe when the "men would dance" and the women spent day and night making the grain cakes.

The ladies told one of the first women anthropologists to visit that "don't be fooled it is the MEN who love this festival we hate it because all we do is work; though we do like the cakes."

People ate grain because it tasted good and is filling; it can also be dried and stored (even hunters and gatherers tend to store "caches" of food for later use); they probably didn't anywhere near what modern people eat (I'm sure they didn't) or even as much as the late stone age farmers; but they did eat some.

Another important point is like the rest of their food, it was SEASONAL; maybe not as sharply seasonal as it was in Southern Africa in the 1970's but still it isn't something you got much of all year except maybe a few dried bits.

There is another article somewhere from about 28,000 years ago in Europe where oats were found at the bottom of a pot, almost certainly made into porridge. I posted it here when it first came out so it is in the archives somewhere.

It is a total myth that Cro-Magnon people ate only meat and fat; they may have done that during the harshest part of the Winter but then caves are a great place to have storage pits for dried vegetables, fruits, and some grains.

Now the jury is still out on the Neanderthalers; it used to be believed that they only ate meat and it still looks like they largely depended on it but more recent finds have found residue from greens (salads) and other foods besides just meat.

Just as many primitive peoples eat only meat. Grains unless cultivated are sparse. go into the Irish country side and find enough oats for a bowl of porridge, See you in a month. The level of disconnect in modern thinking is stunning. CI/CO is a real thing and brings starvation and death quickly. We ate animal fats because pound for pound it was more calories and easier to obtain.

Vegetables... even less calorie dense. Vegetables were tiny puny things before agriculture. Go eat a real wild apple... If you love enough tannin to make you puke and you can get past the dry wood like texture.

P.S. I believe the reason for this is many. One major factor is the lack of knowledge of farming and modern agriculture. Many honestly have no clue on the literally massive amounts of grains required to feed the masses. The Mid-west in fall is stacked with mountains of grain. Both for feed and human foods. They also lack a proper scope of what it takes to produce the rest of the foods they eat. Both in scale and effort required. People even on this forum I'm sure think an acre "crisis" garden is plenty for a family of 4. They simply have no idea what is consumed. It's laughable to assume a group of people could find enough wild grain to make a bowl of anything. A plant every few feet, populating an acre or two, with a few grains each....

 

[Rucus Sunday]

P.S. I believe the reason for this is many. One major factor is the lack of knowledge of farming and modern agriculture. Many honestly have no clue on the literally massive amounts of grains required to feed the masses. The Mid-west in fall is stacked with mountains of grain. Both for feed and human foods. They also lack a proper scope of what it takes to produce the rest of the foods they eat. Both in scale and effort required. People even on this forum I'm sure think an acre "crisis" garden is plenty for a family of 4. They simply have no idea what is consumed. It's laughable to assume a group of people could find enough wild grain to make a bowl of anything. A plant every few feet, populating an acre or two, with a few grains each....

Another possible reason is a relative lack of practical long-term experience with primitive skills. It does not take long at all for an individual, let alone a group of people, immersed in an "abo" lifestyle and to start making all kinds of connections between materials and their possible uses. Many of these connections are intuitive, due to a large database of personal and generational experience. "Hey, this stalk fiber would be perfect for hafting this spar to that piece of wood I found yesterday." It just isn't that difficult to intuit various methods for achieving different outcomes, especially when you actually (not theoretically) have to rely on them for survival. Many of these so-called discoveries could have occurred within one or two generations.

 

[Melodi]

I studied archeology both as an undergraduate and in graduate school; there ARE plenty of vegetables, fruits, seeds, nuts and even some grains found way back in the human diet and even during the Ice Age in Europe.

Again they are SEASONAL; this isn't about making stuff up, this is the result of decades of research including by people who specialize in ancient poop, which is analyzed to see what is in it (these days using DNA as well as just counting seeds under a microscope).

Traditional people have taste preferences too, just like modern people, they craved sweet tastes because a body needs a certain amount of sugar and that tended to come from berries and fruit; with a rare treat of honey from wild hives.

People don't sit down and think "I think I will just eat meat because vegetables are not worth it," no they crave green things in the Spring because our bodies need them; in Europe, they ate berries in the Summer and Fall and probably their limited grain intake in the fall as well.

There are now SEVERAL finds showing COOKED grains were eaten, again maybe not as a mainstay of the diet but people WERE eating it.

The only KNOWN people who ate a very little vegetable or fruit matter were the Inuit and we now know that even they ate SOME greens and other items during the very short seasons they could get them, but for the most part, they are the only people known to survive mostly on Meat and Fat.

Grain probably predates the eating of dairy by thousands and thousands of years; since grains do grow wild (and people do pick them) but for dairy, you need at least semi-domesticated animals.

 

[Dozdoats]

Saw this a few weeks ago and found it interesting. It's old hat that 'an army marches on its stomach,' but few modern civilians realize how much that is so. For example, did you know that canned food was an innovation prompted by Napoleon?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=14&v=4-l_EbXE3LU
Everyday Moments in History - A Roman Soldier Prepares Dinner
RT 14:51
Published on Jun 22, 2018
Today we will join a Roman soldier not for battle but for dinner. In this episode we discuss the diet of a typical imperial Legionary; what they ate, how they prepared meals, and how they consumed food!

 

[Garryowen]

I thought I found the oldest bread in the back of my refrigerator, but Melodi's find is obviously older. Actually, I'm not sure it was bread, but assumed that it used to be.

 

[Groucho]

I've baked bread using Einkorn wheat which is an ancient grain going back about 10,000 years or so. It's good. I used yeast which the originals may not have had. It has good protein and again, the flavor is good. This is NOT your current wheat. Water levels have to be adjusted and bake times are a bit longer, but again, I make a yeast bread and not a flat bread.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einkorn_wheat

 

[Melodi]

I thought I found the oldest bread in the back of my refrigerator, but Melodi's find is obviously older. Actually, I'm not sure it was bread, but assumed that it used to be.

I have had similar experiences with archeological excavations in my fridge as well, it may not be the oldest but sometimes there is the potential for penicillin in the mold lol

(by the way, husband tells me that in some European herbals of the early Middle Ages the monks knew that putting moldy bread on an open injury sometimes kept an infection from spreading, they didn't know why it worked or why it only worked some of the time, but they knew that it could work.

 

[von Koehler]

Just as many primitive peoples eat only meat. Grains unless cultivated are sparse. go into the Irish country side and find enough oats for a bowl of porridge, See you in a month. The level of disconnect in modern thinking is stunning. CI/CO is a real thing and brings starvation and death quickly. We ate animal fats because pound for pound it was more calories and easier to obtain.

Vegetables... even less calorie dense. Vegetables were tiny puny things before agriculture. Go eat a real wild apple... If you love enough tannin to make you puke and you can get past the dry wood like texture.

P.S. I believe the reason for this is many. One major factor is the lack of knowledge of farming and modern agriculture. Many honestly have no clue on the literally massive amounts of grains required to feed the masses. The Mid-west in fall is stacked with mountains of grain. Both for feed and human foods. They also lack a proper scope of what it takes to produce the rest of the foods they eat. Both in scale and effort required. People even on this forum I'm sure think an acre "crisis" garden is plenty for a family of 4. They simply have no idea what is consumed. It's laughable to assume a group of people could find enough wild grain to make a bowl of anything. A plant every few feet, populating an acre or two, with a few grains each....

That is why, in my opinion, growing grains is worthless for a home gardener. Growing potatoes and root crops gives a far greater yield and calories, in less space, and doesn't require nearly as much processing.

von Koehler

 

[Melodi]

That is why, in my opinion, growing grains is worthless for a home gardener. Growing potatoes and root crops gives a far greater yield and calories, in less space, and doesn't require nearly as much processing.

von Koehler

Except that unfortunately, Stan is WRONG, most traditional peoples do NOT only eat meat, in fact, the Inuit were once believed to be the only people who did, except now we know even they ate some wild grasses, tubers, birds eggs etc when they could get them; and their systems have involved that if they don't get a lot of high-fat meat they can become very ill (the Canadian government in the 20th century tried to get them to switch from seals to fish with dire results).

Now from a climate and homesteader position, you are correct that grains may not be your best use of space unless you have a lot of experience and a good amount of land (also draft animals like plow horses or Oxen) because as I said before, grains probably formed a LIMITED role in the traditional diet.

On the other hand, some of the cold hardy grains like oats, barley and rye might be a good choice for some people; potatoes not so much. Even Seed Savers Ireland has said that "long-term" without blight spray, potato growing other than moderate amounts (that a homesteader can do) in barrels or containers on porches is simply no longer viable here.

Now there are organic "blight" treatments (I think they use seaweed) that work most years but are not likely to do much if you have a seriously wet Spring followed by a humid and wet Summer. the blight lives in the soil and is in most of the world now - it gets carried on those humid, warm winds and boom, no potatoes, sometimes for several years running.

A family can fight this by having several hundred pounds growing in sheltered barrels on the porch, and by ruthlessly disposing of any that get infected - so it probably is worth it - not to mention on good years you can get huge amounts of nutritious carbs (unlike bleached four pasta, potatoes have good things in them for people who can eat nightshade family plants) but you would seriously want to have a back up.

Ireland had wheat, barley, and oats that made it during the Great Famine of the 1840's but locals were not allowed to eat it because it as exported for the English Army; especially during periods of climate change, diversity is the key.

Again, I totally agree that grains probably did not make up a huge portion of the Early European stone age diet; but greens, tubers, fruits, and vegetables in season did - so probably did a limited amount of bugs, seaweed near the coast, bird's eggs, fish (fresh and saltwater) and some gathered grains in season.

 

[Stanb999]

I studied archeology both as an undergraduate and in graduate school; there ARE plenty of vegetables, fruits, seeds, nuts and even some grains found way back in the human diet and even during the Ice Age in Europe.

Again they are SEASONAL; this isn't about making stuff up, this is the result of decades of research including by people who specialize in ancient poop, which is analyzed to see what is in it (these days using DNA as well as just counting seeds under a microscope).

Traditional people have taste preferences too, just like modern people, they craved sweet tastes because a body needs a certain amount of sugar and that tended to come from berries and fruit; with a rare treat of honey from wild hives.

People don't sit down and think "I think I will just eat meat because vegetables are not worth it," no they crave green things in the Spring because our bodies need them; in Europe, they ate berries in the Summer and Fall and probably their limited grain intake in the fall as well.

There are now SEVERAL finds showing COOKED grains were eaten, again maybe not as a mainstay of the diet but people WERE eating it.

The only KNOWN people who ate a very little vegetable or fruit matter were the Inuit and we now know that even they ate SOME greens and other items during the very short seasons they could get them, but for the most part, they are the only people known to survive mostly on Meat and Fat.

Grain probably predates the eating of dairy by thousands and thousands of years; since grains do grow wild (and people do pick them) but for dairy, you need at least semi-domesticated animals.

The Maasai people?
The Mongols
Native north Americans


To name a few ate 99% meat and animal products.

 

[Stanb999]

Except that unfortunately, Stan is WRONG, most traditional peoples do NOT only eat meat, in fact, the Inuit were once believed to be the only people who did, except now we know even they ate some wild grasses, tubers, birds eggs etc when they could get them; and their systems have involved that if they don't get a lot of high-fat meat they can become very ill (the Canadian government in the 20th century tried to get them to switch from seals to fish with dire results).

Now from a climate and homesteader position, you are correct that grains may not be your best use of space unless you have a lot of experience and a good amount of land (also draft animals like plow horses or Oxen) because as I said before, grains probably formed a LIMITED role in the traditional diet.

On the other hand, some of the cold hardy grains like oats, barley and rye might be a good choice for some people; potatoes not so much. Even Seed Savers Ireland has said that "long-term" without blight spray, potato growing other than moderate amounts (that a homesteader can do) in barrels or containers on porches is simply no longer viable here.

Now there are organic "blight" treatments (I think they use seaweed) that work most years but are not likely to do much if you have a seriously wet Spring followed by a humid and wet Summer. the blight lives in the soil and is in most of the world now - it gets carried on those humid, warm winds and boom, no potatoes, sometimes for several years running.

A family can fight this by having several hundred pounds growing in sheltered barrels on the porch, and by ruthlessly disposing of any that get infected - so it probably is worth it - not to mention on good years you can get huge amounts of nutritious carbs (unlike bleached four pasta, potatoes have good things in them for people who can eat nightshade family plants) but you would seriously want to have a back up.

Ireland had wheat, barley, and oats that made it during the Great Famine of the 1840's but locals were not allowed to eat it because it as exported for the English Army; especially during periods of climate change, diversity is the key.

Again, I totally agree that grains probably did not make up a huge portion of the Early European stone age diet; but greens, tubers, fruits, and vegetables in season did - so probably did a limited amount of bugs, seaweed near the coast, bird's eggs, fish (fresh and saltwater) and some gathered grains in season.

LOL, your too funny. Where did their calories come from 25000 years ago. Your sounding foolish at this point.

Banana, carrot, corn, eggplant, peach...

 

[Stanb999]

YUM

 

[Stanb999]

I love cabbage...

 

[von Koehler]

Except that unfortunately, Stan is WRONG, most traditional peoples do NOT only eat meat, in fact, the Inuit were once believed to be the only people who did, except now we know even they ate some wild grasses, tubers, birds eggs etc when they could get them; and their systems have involved that if they don't get a lot of high-fat meat they can become very ill (the Canadian government in the 20th century tried to get them to switch from seals to fish with dire results).

Now from a climate and homesteader position, you are correct that grains may not be your best use of space unless you have a lot of experience and a good amount of land (also draft animals like plow horses or Oxen) because as I said before, grains probably formed a LIMITED role in the traditional diet.

On the other hand, some of the cold hardy grains like oats, barley and rye might be a good choice for some people; potatoes not so much. Even Seed Savers Ireland has said that "long-term" without blight spray, potato growing other than moderate amounts (that a homesteader can do) in barrels or containers on porches is simply no longer viable here.

Now there are organic "blight" treatments (I think they use seaweed) that work most years but are not likely to do much if you have a seriously wet Spring followed by a humid and wet Summer. the blight lives in the soil and is in most of the world now - it gets carried on those humid, warm winds and boom, no potatoes, sometimes for several years running.

A family can fight this by having several hundred pounds growing in sheltered barrels on the porch, and by ruthlessly disposing of any that get infected - so it probably is worth it - not to mention on good years you can get huge amounts of nutritious carbs (unlike bleached four pasta, potatoes have good things in them for people who can eat nightshade family plants) but you would seriously want to have a back up.

Ireland had wheat, barley, and oats that made it during the Great Famine of the 1840's but locals were not allowed to eat it because it as exported for the English Army; especially during periods of climate change, diversity is the key.

Again, I totally agree that grains probably did not make up a huge portion of the Early European stone age diet; but greens, tubers, fruits, and vegetables in season did - so probably did a limited amount of bugs, seaweed near the coast, bird's eggs, fish (fresh and saltwater) and some gathered grains in season.

I was, subconsciously, thinking about my own gardening experiences with potatoes: blight or rot was never a problem here. Rather the build up of virus loads which requires new virus free stock [I stumbled upon an amateur technique which works fairly well]. Typically mid-Summer it is very dry here so we avoid these kinds of problems [have to water, though].

von Koehler

 

[Stanb999]

I was, subconsciously, thinking about my own gardening experiences with potatoes: blight or rot was never a problem here. Rather the build up of virus loads which requires new virus free stock [I stumbled upon an amateur technique which works fairly well]. Typically mid-Summer it is very dry here so we avoid these kinds of problems [have to water, though].

von Koehler

If your worried about blight, get resistant varieties. The reason they had so many issues during the Irish potato famine was the Lumper potato variety was particularly susceptible to it and rotted easily. Today it's not commonly consumed. Not only due to the blight issues. It was a watery, mushy, mess when cooked and had the texture of porridge and the taste of flat starch. They did get huge yields tho. Nearly the same per acre as modern in cultivation. Of course they were doing all the work by hand so it was impressive indeed.

 

[Stanb999]

Go read Herodotus, book 3 ,chapter 21-24.

 

[Melodi]

The Maasai people?
The Mongols
Native north Americans


To name a few ate 99% meat and animal products.

Mongols eat garlic, onions (I know I've done some of the cooking and done research for reenactment); Maasai TRADE for other foods and Native North Americans ate EVERYTHING depending on their tribes.

Even BEFORE the Europeans came the Central US hunters and gatherers TRADED with agriculturalists for corn, beans, and other foods; they would mix them to make pecimen; other groups like Ishi's Northern Californian hunters and gathers ate vegetables, fruits, and some wild grains.

Isis became something of a cook when he came in from the wild (as The Last of his Tribe) and complained that "White People overcook vegetables, they should be crispy" (or words to that effect, I don't have time to find it in the book right now).

I have several Native American cookbooks with historical perspectives from before and after European colonization; I don't know that much about the Maasai but I know they trade (and did historically) and the Mongols have a more limited diet but again they trade (and did trade) for supplementary foods like rice, onions, garlic etc to go with their mostly meat and dairy diet.

May you want to do some serious historical food research and get back to me on this?

 

[Melodi]

Oh and we had to do a lot of research on central Asian diets to write a novel on Attila the Hun, my husband likes to eat foods from the places he's writing about - Huns and Mongols were a lot more limited that Mesopotamians or early Germans but they did eat other things than goats and yak butter.

 

[Stanb999]

Mongols eat garlic, onions (I know I've done some of the cooking and done research for reenactment); Maasai TRADE for other foods and Native North Americans ate EVERYTHING depending on their tribes.

Even BEFORE the Europeans came the Central US hunters and gatherers TRADED with agriculturalists for corn, beans, and other foods; they would mix them to make pecimen; other groups like Ishi's Northern Californian hunters and gathers ate vegetables, fruits, and some wild grains.

Isis became something of a cook when he came in from the wild (as The Last of his Tribe) and complained that "White People overcook vegetables, they should be crispy" (or words to that effect, I don't have time to find it in the book right now).

I have several Native American cookbooks with historical perspectives from before and after European colonization; I don't know that much about the Maasai but I know they trade (and did historically) and the Mongols have a more limited diet but again they trade (and did trade) for supplementary foods like rice, onions, garlic etc to go with their mostly meat and dairy diet.

May you want to do some serious historical food research and get back to me on this?

LOL, your ignoring what the people actually say.

North Americans didn't do agriculture until after the white man came. South Americans sure. Who do you think taught the slash and burn Indians the 3 sisters? lol

 

[Stanb999]

Oh and we had to do a lot of research on central Asian diets to write a novel on Attila the Hun, my husband likes to eat foods from the places he's writing about - Huns and Mongols were a lot more limited that Mesopotamians or early Germans but they did eat other things than goats and yak butter.

https://www.historyonthenet.com/what-did-the-mongols-eat/

What did the Mongols eat? For the most part, whatever simple foods they could find on the Steppe. Khans ate much better, however. As with all peoples, the Mongol’s diet depended greatly on where they lived. Mongolia, then and now, had a harsh climate, with long, bitterly cold winters and short, hot summers. Living as they did in an inhospitable climate, the Mongols ate foods they got from their animals. Farming was not possible for the most part, so the most prominent foods in the Mongol diet were meat and milk products such as cheese and yogurt. The Mongols were a nomadic, pastoral culture and they prized their animals: horses, sheep, camels, cattle and goats. As their herds ate up the grass, the Mongols would pack up their gers, tent-like dwellings they lived in, and move their herds to fresher pastures.

Thus, their food groups were predominantly milk products and a variety of meats. While the Mongols appreciated milk products, they didn’t drink fresh milk; instead they fermented milk from mares, making an alcoholic drink known as airag or kumiss. After women finished milking the cattle, goats and sheep, they would process the milk into milk curds, yogurts and airag. The usual beverages were salted tea and airag, fermented mare’s milk.

 

[Melodi]

LOL, your ignoring what the people actually say.

North Americans didn't do agriculture until after the white man came. South Americans sure. Who do you think taught the slash and burn Indians the 3 sisters? lol

I suggest you research the Hopi, the East Coast Woodland Confederacies, The Mound Builders and quite a number of other tribes; I am sorry but you really need to do some research - a Native American cookbook (any good one) will divide pre-Contact North America by regions and show you who was doing agriculture for 4,000 years or more and who wasn't.

One of the largest cities in the world 1,000 years ago was in North America and supported by Maize Corn agriculture - I suggest you look up Chokia on wikipedia.

 

[Melodi]

Also, the Mongols are not prehistoric and they did TRADE for other food with agriculturalists just like the Plains Native American tribes did; for more information of Pre-Contact agriculture in NORTH America you can start here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_era

 

[Stanb999]

Even BEFORE the Europeans came the Central US hunters and gatherers TRADED with agriculturalists for corn, beans, and other foods; they would mix them to make pecimen; other groups like Ishi's Northern Californian hunters and gathers ate vegetables, fruits, and some wild grains.

No corn or grain and very limited berries. Most of the pemmican had no berries. Berries were a rare treat. Certainly more of a spice than a meal. When the Hudson Bay company started shipping tons to the north to "pay" the Indians. It contained the other stuff as fillers so they could make more cash with less meat. Funny how one can study a thing a fail to learn the whole story.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pemmican

The specific ingredients used for pemmican were usually whatever was available. The meat was often bison, deer, elk, or moose. Fruits such as cranberries and saskatoon berries were sometimes added. Blueberries, cherries, chokeberries, and currants were also used, but almost exclusively in ceremonial and wedding pemmican.[7]

 

[Stanb999]

Also, the Mongols are not prehistoric and they did TRADE for other food with agriculturalists just like the Plains Native American tribes did; for more information of Pre-Contact agriculture in NORTH America you can start here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_era

Which plains tribes are we discussing? Certainly not pre-columbian tribes... right. They didn't much exist. The fabled Cherokee is from Georgia. The plains of the US were largely devoid of people because they didn't have domesticated animals. The Horse was an "eeenglish" invention.

 

[20Gauge]

A friend found this for me - the difference is the article today showed they found actual bread crumbs, 30,000 years ago they just found only the grain/grain mill, so could have been bread (probably was) but could also have been porridge.

Bread was around 30,000 years ago: study
Reuters Staff

2 MIN READ

LONDON (Reuters Life!) - 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 the cooking 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.

Also known as the caveman diet, the regime frowns on carbohydrate-laden foods like bread and cereal, and modern-day adherents eat only lean meat, vegetables and fruit.

It was first popularized by the gastroenterologist Walter L. Voegtlin, whose 1975 book lauded the benefits of the hunter-gatherer diet.

https://in.reuters.com/article/us-s...d-30000-years-ago-study-idINTRE69H4FT20101018

You can bet if they can agree on 30,000 years it was most likely 100,000 years.