Scientists Find 6,100-Year-Old Winemaking Operation [Cool]

Archaeologists found a 6,100-year-old ” winemaking operation” inside the same Armenian cave where they found a 5,500-year-old shoe. You know what which means? Humans had been making wine for 600 years longer than they’ve been wearing shoes!

Well, okay, it doesn’t actually mean that, at all. But would you be so surprised? Humans love wine! And they loved it some 6,100 years ago:

Stefan K. Estreicher, a professor at Texas Tech University and author of ” Wine: From Neolithic Times to the 21st Century,” said the Armenian discovery shows ” how important it was to them” to make wine because ” they spent loads of time and effort to build a facility to exploit only yearly” when grapes were harvested.

The wine was probably used for ritual purposes, as burial sites were seen nearby inside the cave. [Excavation co-director] Dr. [Gregory] Areshian said no less than eight bodies have been found up to now, including a baby, a girl, bones of elderly men and, in ceramic vessels, skulls of three adolescents (one still containing brain tissue).

The winery involves ” a vat for fermenting, a press, storage jars, a clay bowl and a drinking cup made out of an animal horn.” It’s the earliest production facility yet found, nevertheless it’s not the oldest evidence of wine consumption; residue in jars found in northwest Iran suggests that winemaking dates back in any case 7,400 years. Nonetheless, its sophistication could mean that earlier winemaking was more elaborate than previously thought.

And there’s something type of nice about that, isn’t there? The idea that some seven millennia ago, people were doing an identical thing you might be? Sure, they harvested, fermented and pressed all their own wine, when you just smuggled yours out of the 7-11 under your coat. And they likely drank their red wine as section of an elaborate funeral ritual, when you drink yours as component to your far less elaborate ” watching King of Queens reruns” ritual. But the $64000 part is this: 7,000 years ago, as today, humans were getting tanked on cheap red wine.

[ NYT ; image via Shutterstock]

Source

This post is tagged: ceramic vessels, neolithic times, ritual purposes, texas tech university, wine consumption