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Humans Made Flour 30,000 Years Ago

We tend to think of cavemen as pretty serious carnivores, hunting game and then roasting the yummy bits over a roaring campfire. But scientists just reported discovering traces of starch on some ancient stone tools. Which suggests that there were probably more than a few bakers in the bunch way back when. The findings appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. [Anna Revedin et al., "Thirty thousand-year-old evidence of plant food processing"]

人们往往认为穴居野人是名副其实的食肉动物，因为他们常常出去狩猎，然后围着熊熊篝火烤野味来吃。但科学家们则宣称在古代石器上发现了淀粉类物质，这说明当时很可能就已经出现了面包师傅。该研究发现刊登在《美国国家科学院院刊》上。

Researchers collected stone tools from three archaeological sites in Italy, Russia and the Czech Republic. Our Paleolithic ancestors called these digs home some 30,000 years ago. The markings on the recovered tools suggest that they were used like grindstones and pestles for processing grains. And they still contained traces of flour.

研究人员分别从意大利、俄罗斯和捷克共和国等三个国家的考古点收集了石器工具。这些考古点是30000年前人类旧石器时代祖先们的“家”。从出土工具上的标记可以看出，当时它们被当做磨石或是杵来使用以加工食物。这些工具上仍有谷物粉残留。

The flour grains came mostly from cattails and ferns, plants whose roots are rich in starch, kind of like a potato. Processing these plants probably involved peeling, drying and grinding their roots. The resulting flour could then be whisked into a dough and cooked.

这些面粉粒主要来自香蒲和蕨类植物，这些植物的根部和土豆一样富含淀粉。要加工这些植物的话，很可能要历经将其根部去皮、晾晒、研磨等一系列工序，最后将得到的粉末可以揉成面团。烹饪食用。

The finding pushes back the first known use of flour by some 10,000 years. Which means that 300 centuries ago, Fred and Wilma might have had a kind of prehistoric pita bread on the menu.

这项发现将人类最早使用面粉的时间提前了约10000年，这就意味着30000年前，弗瑞德和威尔玛就可能已经开始享用原始皮塔饼了~

（注：Fred和Wilma是动画片"The Flintstones"---《摩登原始人》中的人物）

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