Scientists recreate bread our ancestors relished 12,500 years ago

An international team of researchers has recreated a pre-historic mouth-watering bread that our ancestors savoured over 12,500 years ago.

The barley-processing "facilities" found at Huzuq Musa in Israel's Jordan Valley indicate that stone-utensil-produced flour could have been a significant part of the local Natufian people's diet.

Curious, a group of intrepid Israeli researchers went back to the dawn of the Stone Age to make lunch for themselves.

Using 12,500-year-old ancient tools like conical mortars carved into bedrock, the researchers reconstructed how their ancestors processed wild barley to produce groat meals and "proto-pita" -- small loaves of coal-baked, unleavened bread.

The results was a yummy, pre-historic cuisine.

Huzuq Musa is estimated to have had a population of about a hundred people.

"The four large threshing floors discovered near the site - and its accompanying tools - could have produced a sufficient quantity of processed barley for its estimated inhabitants," said professor Mordechai Kislev, expert in archaeo-botony from Bar-Ilan University in Israel.

The findings show that wild-grain-based nutrition emerged some 2,000 to 3,000 years before our hunter-gatherer forefathers established the sedentary farming communities which were the hallmark of the "Neolithic Revolution".

"This Natufian advance was a bridge to the Neolithic revolution, when sedentary farmers developed the discipline needed to plan for the successful planting - and reaping - of domesticated grains," the authors commented.

The fresh experiment began by collecting spikelets - the coated grains of a cereal ear - from wild barley.

After ripening on the ground to prevent them from scattering in the wind, the grains were then separated from the stalks.

After de-husking, the grain was scooped out of the conical mortar by hand then placed into a small cup cut in the adjacent bedrock.

From there, it was transferred for filtering in a small-gauge sieve.

"This was a kind of labour-saving device, making it easier to transfer the grain and waste material to a sieve or other vessel," added archaeologist Dr David Eitam.

The discovery of this sophisticated agro-technological system indicates that Natufian society made the shift from hunting-gathering to an agriculture-based economy, which was possibly extant 3,000 years before the domestication of cereal, he informed.

The research team had independent researchers as well as faculty members from Bar-Ilan and Harvard Universities.

The findings were published in the journal Plos One.