Excavators find image of pizza’s possible precursor among Pompeii ruins
Headline from Anchorage Daily News
But the food depicted in the roughly 2,000-year-old fresco did not include cheese or tomato.
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Experts say that the ancient fresco, which depicts a flat bread with assorted toppings on a tray with other food, could be a "distant relative" of modern-day pizza. There are a few key ingredients missing, however.
Archeologists say a fresco discovered in the ancient ruins of Pompeii is not, as was previously believed, a pizza as the key ingredients did not arrive in Italy until centuries later.
Experts say wall painting doesn't depict Italy's iconic dish, as tomatoes and mozzarella cheese were not available when it was daubed around 2,000 years ago
“It’s an image that obviously to the modern viewer immediately brings to mind a pizza since we are near Naples,” said Pompeii Archaeological Park director Gabriel Zuchtriegel.
It looked like the 2,000-year-old fresco had a pie painted in the middle of the plate. Archeologists, however, say it probably wasn't pizza, considering tomatoes and mozzarella weren't available yet.
Tomatoes were only introduced to Europe from the Americas a few centuries ago, and the discovery of mozzarella likely led to the invention of pizza in Naples in the 1700s.
