Neolithic Farmers Used Grinding Stones to Make Porridge and Not Flour, Claim Archaeologists
Archeologists have found evidence that sheds light on the dietary habits of people who inhabited the Danish island of Funen some five millenniums ago. Researchers uncovered 14 grinding stones and around 5,000 charred grains of crops like naked barley, emmer wheat, and durum wheat on the site, stated The Jerusalem Post. Experts initially speculated that the ancient people used these grinding stones to make flour, but examinations revealed a different story. Findings regarding the food traces found on the island have been published in the journal Vegetation History and Archaeobotany.
The area where these discoveries were made was a Neolithic settlement inhabited by the first farmers of Northern Europe. The group was identified to be a part of the Funen Beaker culture, which lived in Northern, Central, and Eastern Europe from circa 4000 to 2800 B.C.E. Experts named this community after unique clay beakers with funnel-shaped necks found in their settlements. They have been attributed with credit for introducing agriculture in Scandinavia. No other sites associated with the Funnel Beaker Culture have produced such extensive evidence of grinding stones.
The grindstones were estimated to be around 5,500 years old. Analysis unveiled that the cereals were not being pulverized on the grinding stones. The mineral plant remains (phytoliths) and starch grains showed no signs of being grounded.
The starch grain remains that were being consumed by the then-population were further identified to be associated with wild plants by experts. However, they have yet to figure out which exact plants were eaten by the farmers. "We have not identified the plants the starch grains originate from. We have merely ruled out the most obvious candidates – namely the cereals found at the settlement, which were not ground, as well as various collected species, including hazelnuts," stated archaeobotanist, Dr. Welmoed Out, from Moesgaard Museum, according to Earth.
Experts also did not find any trace of markings that occur in grinding stones after they are used to ground materials. This discovery cleared it to the researchers that the grinding stones were not paired with cereals to produce any food item. Senior researcher, Dr. Niels H. Andersen, who co-led the study, believes the grindstones could have been struck with stone pestles. This technique was used 500 years later by human civilization to make gruel or porridge from grains. This assertion made the study claim that the first farmers of Northern Europe had gruel as their staple diet, along with items like berries, nuts, roots, and meat.
Furthermore, the team thinks that the gruel was accompanied by water. Though many experts have speculated that beer came into existence in the Bronze Age and was used among civilizations, there is little physical evidence to back this claim. Researchers want to conduct more analysis before applying these findings to the entire human population in the Bronze Age. "This study only involves one settlement. While it supports other findings from the Funnel Beaker Culture, we cannot rule out the possibility of different results emerging when this method is applied to finds from other excavations," Andersen explained.