middle of the Jordanian desert.
The first Twinkie, which is the only substance on earth that will
not petrify, even after 14,000 years. It's there I tell you, still
in its little cellophane wrapper and still edible.
The quest for the first Twinkie leapt forward with the publication
July 16, of evidence of the first documented breadmaking by a paleolithic
culture that predates both pottery and farming.
The publication is the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
which is basically the Smithsonian Institution. The article is titled,
Archaeobotanical evidence reveals the origins of bread 14,400 yearsago in northeastern Jordan
I know you're thinking that the Twinkie angle is pretty half-baked.
But consider that if I am right, the famous archaeologist Indiana
Jones will really have something to sink his teeth into.
The cultural site of Shubayqa 1 was once the real estate of the Natufian
people, who had the lucky habit of building villages and staying put,
instead of following around and pestering Mammoths and cave bears.
Paleolithic cultures are believed to have been migratory, stopping
only at rock shelters and caves and such.
Natufian sites abound in the Middle East, and these folks are even
thought to have been the first occupants of the biblical city of Jericho,
which has been continuously occupied for at least 10,000 years.
I could not pronounce Shubayqa if my life depended on it ,so I
have renamed Shubayqa 1 to Twinkie Town 1. There are in fact 6 Twinkie
towns in the Jordanian desert all on the shores of a giant dry lake
and all barely explored. Twinkie Town 1 was first noted in 1992, and
partially excavated in 1996.
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| This map can be better viewed at Excavations at the Late Epipalaeolithic Site of Shubayqa 1 ... cited at the bottom of this post. |
seasons and breadcrumbs were discovered and analyzed.
Natufian bread and Twinkies are not that far apart on the food chain.
The bread was mostly starch with cereal grains thrown in. The bio-archaeologists
speculate that this bread was fermented flat bread, like a DiGiorno
self-rising pizza, with a bit of San Francisco sourdough starter thrown
in.
Momma,s little baby likes shortenin' bread
Twinkies are mostly shortening bread with sugar and wheat thrown in.The authors of the above paper suggest the Natufians may have even
made beer, once they got the fermentation thing going. Among the cereal
grains were millet, barley, oats and proto-wheat known as einkorn.
From the fire pits, the expedition deduced that the Natufian's favorite
victuals were gazelle burgers. What's the point of a burger without
a tasty bun?
Twinkie Town 1 sits on a little stone-covered hillock protecting it
from the nearby savannah, which is really a vernal wetland. The site
itself - once excavated - proved extraordinary by Paleolithic standards.
It turns out the village was larger than first presumed and included
human burials beneath the volcanic flagstone floors. The floors are
sunken a little below the hill to give room for stone slab walls which
are tilted upright. The type of roof is unknown. Thatch would be a
good guess given all those grasses in the savannah-wetland.
Again, we are talking about a village that is more than 14,000 years
old, assuming the carbon 14 isotope dating techniques are accurate.
Later neolithic sites in Europe (6,000 years old or so) are all built
on hills and are clearly defensive to protect against hooligans. Twinkie
Town 1 does not appear be defensive, except for weather disasters.
Clearly the Natufians had access to wood, water, grain and gazelle,
but are not believed to have farmed. The culture appears somewhere
between hunting-gathering and intentional agriculture. Curation of
the grassland might be an appropriate way to look at it. No pottery
was observed in the digs, so the bread-making technique is a puzzle.
A tale of two Twinkie Towns
Disaster did occur at Twinkie Town 1. The earliest date of the village
is 14,500 years gone by. the latest is 14,200 years ago.
Somewhere in that timeframe Twinkie Town 1 was abandoned because of
flooding. The village was re-established but no one knows whether
it was soon after the disaster or hundreds of years later.
During the first abandonment, Noah and his ark may have cruised through, searching for a couple of gazelles to add to his collection.
The digs surprised the diggers when they found two sites, one atop
the other separated by almost 2 feet of mud. The diggers were equally
surprised to find two fireplaces in the same location, with one of
below the mud and the other atop the mud.
Both fireplaces had evidence of toaster crumbs but the lower fireplace
had more preserved artifacts. It could be that the upper fireplace
just had more weathering during the eons and less organic material
was preserved. The architecture of the upper and lower villages is
the same.
It has been firmly established (by me, a skilled quack science reporter)
that Twinkies are critical to human existence and survival.
I firmly established this during many backpacking trips to the high
Sierra. Backpacking is a spartan business and Twinkies are one of
the few luxuries light enough to strap to the top of the packframe.
The black bears and the wolverines snickered about this as we hiked,
but they were just jealous that I had Twinkies and they didn't. I
am quite sure I could not have survived without this fine confection.
That is the basis of my suspicions about the lost Twinkies of the
Jordanian desert 145 centuries ago.
Some thoughts on how the Natufians pulled off bread baking in what
is basically a barbecue pit:
1. This bread could have been baked with the blackened salt method.
Salt is the tin foil of the ancients and the nearby dry lake is likely
to have a lot of salt on the surface as do the pleistocene lakes of
the American southwest.
The salt would blacken in the fire and then be peeled off reserving
the moisture of the tasty bread.
2. Bannock, which is a concoction made of flour, salt, baking powder,
Crisco and water. It is something like a cross between a flapjack
and a biscuit. It cooks on an open fire. My wife is an expert at backpacking
bannock cookery. She puts all the dry stuff in a ziplock bag and adds
water and kneads in the field.
`Course the Natufians would substitute gazelle pemmican for the Crisco.
3. Navajo tacos. This is fried flatbread, which is just flour and
water fried in lard. Without all the tasty toppings it's a little
spare but it is better then porridge. It can be either baked or fried.
One other thing: Bread can be dried and stored for lean times then
rehydrated to taste like fresh. The late Colin Fletcher included an
anecdote on this process in his book, The Man from the Cave.
Sources for this essay are listed below and worth reading.
Archaeobotanical evidence reveals the origins of bread 14,400 years
ago in northeastern Jordan.
Excavations at the Late Epipalaeolithic Site of Shubayqa 1: Preliminary
Report on the First Season (2012)
Also What John Muir Missed ... essay on California Indians who didn't farm but did curate
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