Archaeologists never cease to surprise us with their path-breaking discoveries; some of them are fascinating, like the oldest food items.
Food is one of the basic human necessities; in fact, food and hunger are the basic human needs that we fulfill, by hook or crook. The earliest humans didn’t have much preference in terms of food and hunted whatever can give them nourishment and energy. But with the passage of time, humans learned the art of cooking, and food was never the same. But have you ever thought about what is the oldest food ever discovered? Well, by oldest, we don’t mean the pack of yoghurt or bread at the back of your fridge, waiting to be discovered. Here are some of theoldest food items that were discovered by archaeologists.
The pre-historic bread.
One of the fascinating discoveries made by archaeologists in Oxfordshire, England, was bread. And it was not any other bread; it was almost 55,00 years old! The bread was first confused as a lump of charcoal. After studying, an archaeologist pointed out the presence of barley in it. So, if the age of the bread is accurate, then this bread was probably baked by the first inhabitants of Britain.
Butter in a bog.
If you wanted to store your seventy-seven barrels of butter in Ireland some 3000 years ago, then you would have very limited options. That was perhaps the problem with people who sink their butter in peat near Kildare bog, 3000 years back. They probably forgot all about it, but surprisingly, the barrel was still intact and full of butter in the year 2009. The butter was in a wax-like state, which is natural, seeing that it was underground for nearly three millennia. But how did it taste? we might never know.
Chocolate.
Now, this find is not that old as other discoveries unearthed by archaeologists, but still, it is the world’s oldest chocolate ever uncovered. We all know that chocolate was quite an old discovery because of its presence in ancient civilization, but we still don’t have any evidence of it in candy form. The chocolate was from the year 1902 to commemorate the coronation of Edward VII. The uneaten box of chocolate was passed on from mother to daughter, who donated it to St. Andrews Preservation Trust.
So, are you fascinated by these food discoveries or grossed out?
