Ancient site dates grain use to 20,000 BC

WASHINGTON, Aug. 5 (UPI) -- Archaeologists have found evidence that humans in what is now Israel were grinding grains into flour thousands of years before the first farming.

The evidence reported in the journal Nature is a grinding stone found at an archaeological site on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. The finds at Ohalo II are believed to be 22,000 years old, at least 10,000 years before the dawn of agriculture.

"We identified barley starch and maybe wheat," Dolores Piperno, an archaeobotanist from the Smithsonian, told the Washington Post. "Barley is the first crop to show up among cereals, and this shows that people were focusing on it even 10,000 years earlier."

Other researchers said Ohalo is unique because the settlement there first burned and was then flooded, preserving fish and animal bones, grape seeds and other signs of the inhabitants diet.

They said that the settlers might have been able to bake bread, using the yeast often found on grape skins, or to make wine.