Paleo people were making flour more than 30000 years ago

“Presumably they mixed the flour with water and cooked (it)” and that they “surely used grains”, she told NPR.

Ancient hunter-gatherer communities used to thrive in the Grotta Paglicci in the Apulia region in the past 34,000 to 32,000 years back where this culture has generated many crucial artifacts and tools, including mural paintings involving animals and bone etchings.

Scientists have recently discovered an ancient grinding stone from Grotta Paglicci in Apulia, south of Italy where researchers have analyzed debris from the stone that was actually identified to be oatmeal. There was residue of starch from acorns and millets on the grinding stone too.

Marta Mariotti Lippi claimed there were many other grinding tools, but this was the oldest.

The University of Florence researchers hope to continue to study the stone vessels and the caves to find out exactly what the processed flour was used for, and to what extent.

As for the ancient grinding stone itself, Lippi and her team announced that they plan to conduct further studies on the oatmeal traces on to determine which specific foods members of prehistoric cultures typically dined on. They had to be heated since 32,000 years ago the climate was cooler that it is at present and so leaving them to dry naturally would have taken much time.

The flour could be stored for a long period of time without spoiling and one could also travel long distances with it easily.

There are other possible explanations for why the grains show signs of heating, notes John Speth, a professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of Michigan, who was not involved in the research. The oat starch on it serves as evidence that indeed people of the Paleolithic era grounded up wild oat plants using the stones. According to him, the palaeolithic people could have used the same stone first as a grinder and then as a type of hot coal.

But he agrees that the grains were heated as part of processing for consumption, and that this marks a key step in the evolution of human foodways in Europe.

But she’s unwilling to speculate whether the outcome was a kind of flat oatcake or a gruel or porridge.

This is interesting, because paleo diet is mostly carbohydrate-free, or at least very low on refined carbohydrates.