SC - Oldest Bread in Britain - OOP

[Micaylah]

Found this on the BBC News Online site and thought it might be of some
interest.

Micaylah

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Oldest Bread in Britain
Tuesday, October 12, 1999 Published at 17:41 GMT 18:41 UK
By BBC News Online Science Editor Dr David Whitehouse

Small pieces of burnt bread, discovered in a pit at Yarnton in
Oxfordshire, UK, have been dated and found to be 5,500 years old. This
makes the Neolithic bread the oldest ever found in Britain.

The pieces turned up when the soil from the recently-excavated pit was
mixed with water, allowing light material to float and be removed.

Initially, the burnt fragments were mistaken for pieces of wood
charcoal, but when Dr Mark Robinson from the Oxford University Museum
examined them through a microscope, he could clearly see
partially-crushed grains of barley.

>From the amount of radioactive carbon in the sample, it is estimated
that the bread was baked between 3620 - 3350 BC.

A flint knife was also found in the pit, along with over 200 flint
flakes, some of which had been sharpened and serrated.

Crumbs of pottery were also discovered, along with hazelnut shells and
apple cores.

Archaeologists speculate that it may have been a rubbish deposit, but
the presence of a knife in good condition and the bread suggests it
was a religious offering.

The bread was made by the first farmers to arrive in central England
having migrated from mainland Europe.

They cleared the extensive forests and planted wheat and barley as
well as keeping cattle and pigs.


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