An excavation in the Middle East shows that baking predates farming

Crumbs! ABSENCE of evidence is not evidence of absence. The value of that aphorism has just been shown by a discovery made at Qa' Shubayqa, in north-eastern Jordan. Amaia Arranz-Otaegui of the University of Copenhagen and her colleagues found breadcrumbs in two ancient fireplaces there. Not that unusual as archaeological discoveries go, except that these fireplaces were between 14,200 and 14,400 years old. The loaves the crumbs came from were thus baked more than 4,000 years before the beginning...