Pizza at Pompeii: Newly-discovered painting shows the food’s ‘distant ancestor’

Move over, Still Life with Apples. A newly-discovered food painting is making people hungry. 

Archaeologists in Pompeii have discovered a 2,000-year-old fresco depicting what they said looks like a "distant ancestor" of perhaps one of the most well-loved foods in the world: pizza. 

The fresco was found in a newly-excavated area of Pompeii on the wall of an ancient Pompeian house, according to a translated version of a press release from the Archaeological Park of Pompeii.

So if it looks like pizza, smells like pizza, and tastes like pizza – why isn’t it pizza? 

Press release, Archaeological Park of Pompeii

That’s because several characteristic ingredients of pizza are missing, namely the mozzarella and tomatoes, according to the experts.

Archaeologists believe the food seen on the fresco is a flat focaccia covered in fruit. Specialists said pomegranates and perhaps a date can be for sure made out in the artwork, and that the fruit was possibly covered in spices or pesto. 

The painting also depicts a goblet filled with wine and other dried fruits. 

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In the area where this fresco was found, archeologists had already unearthed an annexed bakery nearby. 

In the working areas near the oven, the skeletons of three victims have been found in the past weeks, the Park said. 

This story was reported from Detroit.