The oldest grinding flour in the world will be on display at the Milan Expo 2015 and is set to "revolutionize understanding of Paleolithic man", officials announced on Thursday.
Found in Bilancino, Florence in 1996, the 30,000-year-old flour will be part of the Tuscany Region's program on evolution of food.
"It revolutionizes knowledge on human nutrition because up until now, it has been widely recognized that the nomadic hunter-gatherers of the Upper Palaeolithic were essentially carnivorous", archeologists Biancamaria Aranguren of the Archaeological Superintendence of Tuscany and Anna Revedin from Italian Institute of Prehistory and Early History IIPP said.
Archaeologists discovered the flour while investigating a Neolithic settlement with stones recognized as a mill and a pestle. A research program helmed by IIPP identified starch traces on the stone as "prehistoric flour" from Typha, the marsh plant cattail.
"The presence of these starch granules represent the oldest direct evidence not only of the use of food plants, but especially a real 'recipe' for the preparation of a food of vegetable origin", Revedin and Aranguren said.
The research program was funded by the Florence Savings Bank.
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