Piles of a mysterious white, powdery substance found inside the ruins of a 3,000-year-old building in Armenia are a culinary historian’s dream — the remnants of ancient flour.

A Polish-Armenian team of archaeologists made the discovery while working at an archaeological site in the town of Metsamor, in western Armenia, last fall. Upon identifying the flour and excavating several furnaces, the team realized that the ancient structure once served as a large bakery. The dustings of the ancient flour were sprinkled throughout the dirt-cloaked ruins, including on several furnaces, according to Science in Poland, a Polish news website jointly run by independent media and the government.

“Upon first glance, it looked like ashes,” Krzysztof Jakubiak, a professor of archaeology at the University of Warsaw who led the excavation, told Live Science. “We knew it was something organic and collected about four to five sacks’ worth of the material.”

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