Sometimes referred to as oatmeal in parts of North America, porridge is a breakfast staple around the world and new research suggests it has been for tens of thousands of years.
According to The Scotland Herald, authors of a study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences detailed ancient tools that were apparently used to grind oats. The researchers made their discovery in Italy and dated the tools 30,000 years old.
The researchers previously discovered what they called a "flour site" in April that dated back to the Upper Paleolithic period, which is also called the Late Stone Age.
"On the surface of the mill," study lead author Marta Mariotti, a botanist at the University of Florence, said in a press release. "We found starch grains of oats, Avena barbata L. most likely, and this is when the first evidence of the use of this plant. The particular condition of the starch grains has led us to believe that the grains (kernels), have been subjected to a heat treatment before being crushed.
"Our thesis is that the machining of the caryopses happen multistage after collection: the heat treatment and grinding, detected in this work, and then, presumably, the subsequent addition of water and cooking. It must be said that this type of procedure is still used in Asia to this day."
The dating of the tools and "flour site" would indicate members of the Late Stone Age were making themselves porridge just before the emergence of farming, The Herald noted.
"There is a relationship there to be explored between diet, experimentation with processing plant food and cultural sophistication," Matt Pope, an archaeologist at University College London, told the newspaper. "We've had evidence of the processing of roots and cattails, but here we've got a grain, and a grain that we're very familiar with.
"If we were to look more systematically for ground stone technology we would find this is a more widespread phenomenon."
