ITALY

Around the World January 1, 2011

Once thought to be almost exclusively meat-eaters, Paleolithic people in Europe may have munched on flatbread as well.
SHARE:

ITALY: Once thought to be almost exclusively meat-eaters, Paleolithic people in Europe may have munched on flatbread as well. Grinding stones—from Italy, Russia, and the Czech Republic—are embedded with starch grains, suggesting that 30,000 years ago people processed roots from cattails and ferns into flour, a food option for lean hunting times. The find pushes the first use of flour back by 10,000 years and suggests that women played a role in food production at the time. Researchers report that simple bread made with cattail flour doesn't taste so bad. 

  • Features January/February 2026

    The Cost of Doing Business

    Piecing together the Roman empire’s longest known inscription—a peculiarly precise inventory of prices

    Read Article
    A digital reconstruction shows how the Civil Basilica in the city of Aphrodisias in southwestern Anatolia would have appeared with the Edict of Maximum Prices inscribed on its facade.
    Ece Savaş and Philip Stinson
  • Features January/February 2026

    The Birds of Amarna

    An Egyptian princess seeks sanctuary in her private palace

    Read Article
    The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York/ Rogers Fund, 1930
  • Features January/February 2026

    Taking the Measure of Mesoamerica

    Archaeologists decode the sacred mathematics embedded in an ancient city’s architecture

    Read Article
    Courtesy Claudia I. Alvarado-León
  • Features January/February 2026

    Stone Gods and Monsters

    3,000 years ago, an intoxicating new religion beckoned pilgrims to temples high in the Andes

    Read Article
    The ritual center of Chavín de Huántar flourished in northern Peru.
    Courtesy John Rick