Researchers have found the world's oldest example of bread. The researchers found 24 ancient breadcrumbs on an archaeological dig in Jordan. The breadcrumbs were burnt, which is how they survived for so long. The crumbs come from bread made about 14,000 years old. This means that Stone Age people were baking bread. This is 4,000 years earlier than scientists thought. The people who baked the bread lived in Jordan from 12,500 to 9,500 B.C. They were hunter-gatherers. They lived thousands of years before humans settled down to become farmers.
The breadcrumbs were made from cereals such as barley, wheat and oats. The lead researcher said the bread took a long time to make. The ancient people ground the cereals into flour and mixed it with water to make dough. After that, they baked it in hot ashes or on a hot stone. The bread looked like the flat pitta bread made across the Middle East. Another researcher said the bread could be one reason why the agricultural revolution started. Stone Age people understood it was easier to farm the wheat for bread instead of collecting it from the wild.