28 August 2025 The Future is the Product of the Past

Archaeologists Discover 8600-year-old Bread at Çatalhöyük May be the Oldest Bread in the World

Archaeologists have discovered about 8,600-year-old bread at Çatalhöyük, a Neolithic settlement in central Turkey.

Çatalhöyük is noteworthy because it is one of the first human proto-cities to have been built. Full of densely packed mud brick houses covered in paintings and symbolic decorations, its population hovered around 8,000. That made it one of the biggest settlements of its era, somewhere between an outsized village and a tiny city. People, mud-brick homes through ceiling doors, and they navigated sidewalks that wound around the city’s rooftops.

Archaeologists have discovered an oven structure in the area called “Mekan 66”. Around the largely destroyed oven, wheat, barley, pea seeds, and a handful find that could be food were found.

Analyses conducted at Necmettin Erbakan University Science and Technology Research and Application Center (BITAM) determined that the spongy residue was fermented bread from 6600 B.C.

Head of the Excavation Committee and Anadolu University Faculty Member Associate Professor Ali Umut Türkcan told the AA correspondent that when “archaeology” is mentioned, structures, monuments, and finds come to mind.

Photo: AA

Pointing out that modern archaeology today also studies the archaeology of food, Türkcan said, “We need to say that the starting point of food archaeology is Anatolia. Çatalhöyük is one of the very important stops here. A finding we discovered in 2021. In Turkish excavations, we have shown that we can now detect such organic remains with very sensitive documentation and detailed studies,” he said.

Stating that Çatalhöyük Neolithic City has an important place in this field, Türkcan said:

“The small and round spongy find in the corner of the oven was found to be bread after careful documentation. The fact that the structure was covered with a thin clay allowed all of these organic remains, both wooden and bread, to be preserved until today. Radiocarbon tests conducted at the TUBITAK Marmara Research Center (MAM) showed that our sample can be dated back to approximately 6,600 BC.”

Photo: AA

According to Turkcan, the earliest known evidence of leavened bread comes from Egypt, while the find at Catalhoyuk predates all others, making it the world’s oldest bread.

“We can say that this finds from Çatalhöyük is the oldest bread in the world. It is a reduced version of loaf bread. It has a finger pressed in the center, it was not baked, but it was fermented and came to the present day with the starches inside. There is no such example. Catalhoyuk was already the center of many firsts.”

In 2012 Çatalhöyük was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Related Articles

Archaeologists have uncovered oldest Roman forum in Hispania, at the site of a named unknown city

3 September 2023

3 September 2023

Archaeologists have uncovered an ancient Roman forum from more than 2,000 years ago at the site of an unknown city...

Ancient Christian Settlement Discovered in Egypt

14 March 2021

14 March 2021

The Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities said on Saturday that a French-Norwegian archaeological team had discovered a new ancient Christian settlement...

New Huge Viking-age boat grave discovered by Radar in Norway

12 April 2022

12 April 2022

Archaeologists have located a boat grave from the Viking Age near Øyesletta in Norway during a ground-penetrating radar (GPR) survey....

8,000-year-old Cave paintings found in Türkiye’s İnkaya Cave depict life and death

10 September 2023

10 September 2023

A number of cave paintings dating back some 8,000 years have been found in İnkaya cave in the Marmara province...

A ‘very rare’ clay figurine of god Mercury and a previously unknown Roman settlement were discovered at the excavation site in Kent

23 February 2024

23 February 2024

At a previously unknown Roman settlement that was formerly next to a busy port but is now 10 miles from...

Archaeologists reveal largest paleolithic cave art site in Eastern Iberia

17 September 2023

17 September 2023

More than 100 ancient paintings and engravings thought to be at least 24,000 years old were found in the cave...

Citizen scientists discover more than 1,000 new burial mounds in a Dutch archaeological project

29 January 2023

29 January 2023

A Dutch archaeological project in which thousands of amateur sleuths combed specialized maps and high resolution photographs resulted in the...

Well-preserved Ming Dynasty tomb unearthed in China’s Shanxi Province

17 March 2024

17 March 2024

Archaeologists from the Shanxi Institute of Cultural Relics and Archeology have unearthed a well-preserved tomb from the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644)...

In Peru, Archaeologists Discovered an Ancient Dance Floor that can Imitate Rumbling of Thunder

21 July 2023

21 July 2023

Archaeologists have discovered an ancient “sounding” dance floor in Peru that was designed to create a drum-like sound when stepped...

A Thousand-Year-Old Iron Age-old grave in Finland Is Ascribed to a Prominent Non-Binary Person

10 August 2021

10 August 2021

Archaeologists found a weapon grave in Finland’s Suontaka Vesitorninmäki in 1968. The remains discovered in the burial have been at...

The oldest trace of human activity discovered in North America dates back 23,000 years

26 September 2021

26 September 2021

A recent fossil footprint found in New Mexico, the United States, indicates that humans existed in North America about 23,000...

Mysterious Rods Found in 5,500-year-old Tomb identified to Be Earliest Drinking Straws

19 January 2022

19 January 2022

Russian archaeologists argue that the rods unearthed in an early bronze age tomb in the Caucasus are the oldest known...

Unexpected Results Of Ancient DNA Study: Analysis sheds light on the early peopling of South America

3 November 2022

3 November 2022

Around 60,000 years ago, modern humans left Africa and quickly spread across six continents. Researchers can trace this epic migration...

3,000-Year-Old Lost Anatolian language ‘Kalašma’ deciphered

5 July 2024

5 July 2024

In 2023 excavation site at the foot of Ambarlikaya in Boğazköy-Hattusha in Turkey, a cuneiform tablet with a previously unknown...

Małopolskie Region Reveals Oldest Evidence of Metal Mining in Poland, Dating Back 1,000 Years Earlier Than Previously Thought

16 February 2025

16 February 2025

Researchers have uncovered the oldest confirmed evidence of metal ore mining and metallurgy in Poland through the study of lead...