Archaeologists find 14,000-year-old flatbread remains in Jordan

Charred remains of some of the earliest bread ever made has been discovered in Jordan, researchers say.

A team of archaeologists from the University of Copenhagen, University College London and University of Cambridge, analyzed the food remains at a hunter-gatherer site in northeastern Jordan.

Researchers believe the remains are of a flatbread made 14,400 years ago, well before the advent of agriculture.

Their findings were published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"We now know that bread-like products were produced long before the development of farming," said Amaia Arranz Otaegui, lead author on the study and an archaeobotanist with the University of Copenhagen, in a statement. "The next step is to evaluate if the production and consumption of bread influenced the emergence of plant cultivation and domestication at all."

Archaeologists believe the discovery of this bread suggests its production may have influenced the cultivation of cereals leading to the agricultural boom in the Neolithic period.

The remains discovered in Jordan were analyzed using electronic microscopy at a University College London lab.

Researchers at Copenhagen said they recently received a new grant to continue studying prehistoric food.

"Building on our research into early bread, this will in the future give us a better idea why certain ingredients were favored over others and were eventually selected for cultivation," said Tobias Richter, an archaeologist at the University of Copenhagen who led the excavation of the site in Jordan, in a statement.

Follow Brett Molina on Twitter: @brettmolina23.

WSOC