Which came first, bread, farming, or maybe beer?
A recent find in Jordan of a 14,500-year-old flatbread indicates that bread was first made about 4000 years before agriculture was invented.
The flatbread, was fashioned from wild cereals such as barley, einkorn or oats, as well as tubers that had been ground into flour.
Did the invention of bread drive the invention agriculture?
One researcher wondered, “We now have to assess whether there was a relationship between bread production and the origins of agriculture. It’s possible bread may have provided an incentive for people to take up plant cultivation and farming, if it became a desirable or much-sought-after food.”
Another researcher thought, “Bread provides us with an important source of carbohydrates and nutrients, including B vitamins, iron and magnesium, as well as fiber.”
There’s also another theory that’s difficult to prove, but plausible. It was the human desire for a steady supply of alcohol, not food, that drove the shift to agriculture and settlement. Maybe beer came before bread. And as soon as people got a taste of it, they would’ve wanted more than could be produced by gathering seeds or fruits or honey.
This would certainly help explain why early humans would ever have traded the comparatively easy lifestyle of the hunter-gatherer, who typically devotes far less time and effort to obtaining food than the farmer, for the toil and inferior diet of the early agriculturist.
(I think this was chopped and changed from an article on Kottke.org)