
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.