Bread was being baked thousands of years before farming began.

12,500 BC · 9000 BC · apart: 3500 years

The oldest evidence of bread-making, about 14,500 years old, comes from a Natufian site in the desert of north-eastern Jordan.

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The event

• The dawn of farmingc. 9000 BC · Fertile Crescent. Around 11,000 years ago people in the Fertile Crescent began sowing wheat and barley, and later tamed goats, sheep and cattle. Farming also arose independently in China, Mesoamerica, the Andes and New Guinea. Settled life brought population growth and villages, then cities, states and writing.

Prehistory

More amazing facts

• 14,000 BC · 2560 BC · 300 BC Japan's Jōmon period lasted some 14,000 years.
• 13,000 BC · 1965 Houses built of mammoth bones were found by a farmer enlarging his cellar.
• 12,000 BC Some 14,000 years ago, people were already nursing sick dogs.
• 11,000 BC · 9000 BC Beer may be older than farming.
• 9500 BC · 3000 BC Göbekli Tepe was built around 9500 BC, 6,500 years before Stonehenge.
• 9500 BC · 2560 BC The Shigir Idol from the Urals was carved about 11,500 years ago. When the Great Pyramid was built, it was already almost 7,000 years old, older than the pyramid is today.

All amazing facts (1058) →