Stone Age bakers made first bread thousands of years before farming

The team at the site in north-east Jordan where the earliest bread was found

The team at the site in north-east Jordan where the earliest bread was found

Image courtesy of Alexis Pantos

A trail of ancient bread crumbs has helped archaeologists put the origins of bread making in the Stone Age. The find provides the first direct evidence that humans were baking with wheat and oats thousands of years before they began farming the cereals.

Bread has been an important staple food for millennia. Stale loaves of bread dating back 3500 years have turned up in Ancient Egyptian tombs, and there are domed ovens that might have been used for baking at …

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