In the early Bronze Age, a piece of bread was buried beneath the threshold of a newly built house in what is today central Turkey.
Now, more than 5,000 years later, archaeologists have unearthed it, and helped a local bakery to recreate the recipe — with customers lining up to buy it.
Round and flat like a pancake, 12 centimetres (five inches) in diameter, the bread was discovered during excavations at Kulluoba, a site near the central Anatolian city of Eskisehir.
“This is the oldest baked bread to have come to light during an excavation, and it has largely been able to preserve its shape,” said Murat Turkteki, archaeologist and director of the excavation.
“Bread is a rare find during an excavation. Usually, you only find crumbs,” he told AFP.
“But here, it was preserved because it had been burnt and buried,” he said.
The bread was charred and buried under the entrance of a dwelling built around 3,300 BC.
A piece had been torn off, before the bread was burnt, then buried when the house was built.
“It makes us think of a ritual of abundance,” Turkteki said.
Unearthed in September 2024, the charred bread has been on display at the Eskisehir Archaeological Museum since Wednesday.
“We were very moved by this discovery. Talking to our excavation director, I wondered if we could reproduce this bread,” said the city’s mayor, Ayse Unluce.
Analyses showed that the bread was made with coarsely ground emmer flour, an ancient variety of wheat, and lentil seeds, with the leaf of an as yet undetermined plant used as yeast.
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