Archaeobotanical evidence reveals the origins of bread 14,400 years ago in northeastern Jordan.

The origins of bread have long been associated with the emergence of agriculture and cereal domestication during the Neolithic in southwest Asia. In this study we analyze a total of 24 charred food remains from Shubayqa 1, a Natufian hunter-gatherer site located in northeastern Jordan and dated to 14.6-11.6 ka cal BP. Our finds provide empirical data to demonstrate that the preparation and consumption of bread-like products predated the emergence of agriculture by at least 4,000 years. The interdisciplinary analyses indicate the use of some of the "founder crops" of southwest Asian agriculture (e.g., Triticum boeoticum, wild einkorn) and root foods (e.g., Bolboschoenus glaucus, club-rush tubers) to produce flat bread-like products. The available archaeobotanical evidence for the Natufian period indicates that cereal exploitation was not common during this time, and it is most likely that cereal-based meals like bread become staples only when agriculture was firmly established.

Risk, Reliability and Resilience: Phytolith Evidence for Alternative 'Neolithization' Pathways at Kharaneh IV in the Azraq Basin, Jordan.

'Neolithization' pathway refers to the development of adaptations that characterized subsequent Neolithic life, sedentary occupations, and agriculture. In the Levant, the origins of these human behaviors are widely argued to have emerged during the Early Epipaleolithic (ca. 23 ka cal BP). Consequently, there has been a pre-occupation with identifying and modeling the dietary shift to cereal and grains during this period, which is considered to have been a key development that facilitated increasing sedentism and, eventually, agriculture. Yet, direct evidence of plant use in the form of macrobotanical remains is extremely limited at Epipaleolithic sites and the expected 'Neolithization' pathway has not been robustly demonstrated. However, new direct microbotanical phytolith evidence from the large aggregation site of Kharaneh IV, in the Azraq Basin, suggests that increasingly settled occupation was not the result of wild grass and cereal use, but rather the result of a typical hunter-gatherer balance, based on the use of mostly reliable resources supplemented by some risky resources. Moreover, and illustrating this balance, the direct botanical evidence emphases the importance of the wetlands as an under-recognized reliable plant resource. Significantly, the use of these reliable wetland plant resources at Kharaneh IV represents an unexpected 'Neolithization' pathway.