The remnants of oats found on a grinding tool taken from the Grotta Paglicci in Southern Italy in 1989 is the oldest known example of a multi-step process of grinding raw oats into flour that has been discovered to date. Marta Mariotti Lippi with the Department of Biology at the University of Florence in Italy along with anthropologists from the University of Siena are the first to offer proof that the most ancient of modern humans in Europe used flour made from oats as a part of their diet.
The researchers examine the composition of starch grains found on a grinding tool from the Grotta Paglicci and determined the tool was used to grind wild oats. The surface of the tool was confirmed to have been used for grinding oats into flour by the abrasive lines on the surface of the tool and the positions of the starch grains in the abrasion lines. The tool and the grains of oats are 32,000 years old. The people that used the tool heated the grain before grinding due to the cold temperatures that were common in the area at the time the tool was used.
The discovery shows that the ancient people were grinding grains to make flour much earlier than previously known. The ancient peoples are not thought to have grown the grain as a crop but harvested the naturally occurring oats in the area where they lived. Farming and the growing of grains for food did not occur in Europe for another 20,000 years. The discovery indicates that making flour was not brought to Europe out of Africa because some groups of Europeans already knew how to make flour from grain.
