Britons may have discovered a taste for bread thousands of years earlier than previously thought, thanks to trade with more advanced neighbors on the European continent.
That’s the conclusion scientists have drawn after discovering that samples from a now-submerged prehistoric camp in southern England contained traces of ancient wheat DNA.
The findings, published Thursday in the journal Science, suggest that Stone Age hunter-gatherers weren’t always displaced suddenly by farmers, but that the two societies co-existed for lengthy periods of time.
Researchers say the study shows that other archaeological assumptions based on bones or fossil study could also be called into question by a thorough analysis of microscopic genetic material hitherto overlooked. Read more.