The Paleolithic Era is n’t renowned for its culinary masterpieces . pith , nut and Chuck Berry were commonplace , whereas farm grains were strictly off the menu . At least that ’s what we used to call back . Now , new evidence shows that the Paleolithic people may have also barrack up oats , and even made heart - warmingporridge .
Traces of starchy oat have been institute on an ancient pestle . And the interpersonal chemistry of the food grain indicates that these old oats were heated up with liquid to make an ancient porridge , stark for hungry people of the other Stone Age .
A subject analyzed keep starch grain that were still stick to stone grinding tools find oneself in Italy , Russia and the Czech Republic . The results are published inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences .
The oat have been trace back some 32,000 long time , well before the land revolution began around12,000years ago . This have in mind that the grain are from thePaleolithic Era , which ended some 10,000 years ago , and map the other know human consumption of oats . The Paleolithic mass steadily developed their use of tool , which appears to have included solid food grinders that could be used on caryopsis .
Mariotti Lippi from the University of Florence , an author on the study , toldNew Scientistthat the oat appear to have been warmed up before grinding to make the outgrowth easy . Heating the oats releases trammel moisture , dry them out .
The grain found were also starchy , gelatinous and vain . This indicates that they were plausibly heated after labor as well . The amylum in the oat change as they are ignite so that they can absorb moisture , and the whole mixture becomes chummy and gloopy .
All this indicates that the dish of the day for palaeolithic people in Europe may just have been porridge .
This is n’t the first object lesson of such behavior , as it is already known that these people ground up grain and ancestor plants to make flour , and perchance make those into niggling flatbread ( although not specially flavorsome ones , we depend ) .
“ We ’ve had evidence of the processing of theme and cattail , but here we ’ve stimulate a texture , and a grain that we ’re very familiar with , ” Matt Pope , an archeologist from University College London , toldNew Scientist . “ If we were to look more systematically for ground stone technology we would find this is a more widespread phenomenon . ”
Image in text : The gelatinous starch grain determine from the labour stone . Marta Mariotti Lippi .
[ H / T : New Scientist ]
