Posted on 10/20/2008 5:05:51 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Scholars have always suspected that the ancients had odd tastes. If you believe Homer, wise old Nestor, veteran of the Trojan War, enjoyed a few scrapings of goat's cheese and a dollop of honey in his wine. And Homer might have been right: archaeologists often find little bronze cheese graters in later Greek graves which they think were part of a drinking kit. But until now there has been no good evidence that the Minoans and their mainland neighbours the Mycenaeans knew how to brew beer or mead, let alone mixed them into cocktails.
After painstaking chemical analysis of cups, goblets and pots from all over Bronze Age Greece, there can be no doubt about it. These sophisticated people produced some of the world's first, and strangest, cocktails. Hidden in the pores of ancient bits of pottery are the chemical signatures of those drinks...
More intriguing than resin-flavoured wines were the mixtures that the Greeks were drinking, both on Crete and at mainland cities such as the great citadel at Mycenae, in the Peloponnese. A famous 3000-year-old drinking vessel from Mycenae, known as the "beer mug" because of its shape, had held both mead and wine - but disappointingly no trace of beer. Numerous goblets and conical cups from a cemetery at Armenoi in northern Crete contained an even weirder mix - wine, mead and beer. "We have a good idea of what's going on here," says McGovern. "This is something that's not just wine. It has added extras - grain, fruit and honey."
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
Brock University professor anxious to dive on Iron Age shipwreck
The Standard (St. Catharine’s Ontario) | Saturday, December 29, 2007 | Samantha Craggs
Posted on 12/29/2007 6:52:12 PM PST by SunkenCiv
14 posted on 01/02/2008 10:56:06 PM PST by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1945781/posts?page=14#14
[snip] Apropos of nothing, I re-watched that Helen of Troy documentary with Bettany Hughes; she and an archaeologist discussed the analysis of some Mycenaean jars which had been used for a mixture of retsina, barley beer, and honey mead. So of course they had to try it, and both praised the flavor. Of course, it must be pretty potent. Maybe this is what Homeric characters were doing when they’re described as “mingling wine” (it’s generally thought it refers to dilution with water). [end]
How do they know the Greeks drank beer, mead, and wine at the same time, instead of at different times from the same cup?
|
|
|||
Gods |
The article is from 1999, but it appears to not have been posted. |
||
|
· Mirabilis · Texas AM Anthropology News · Yahoo Anthro & Archaeo · · History or Science & Nature Podcasts · Excerpt, or Link only? · cgk's list of ping lists · |
|||
I had always thought that fermented beverages were more meal than recreational drink in the ages prior to upgrades in food preservation abilities/technology.
You damned libertarians. /joke alert! joke alert!
The team is confident that the ancients really were quaffing some sort of cocktail from these cups, and that the residues aren't just the remains of a succession of different drinks. "So many of them show the same mix," says McGovern. "It's hard to imagine how all of them could have accumulated the same compounds unless the drinks were mixed up at the same time."
That makes sense. Not conclusive, but it's certainly a reasonable deduction.
I have had homemade mead before—I’d love to drink nothing but it (if I were much of an alocholo-drinking person).
Helen of Troy
Starring: Bettany Hughes
Amazon search
One of my classmates started brewing his own beer at an early age (perhaps after he got his house, so maybe not so early), and by the time he gave me a full rundown on his homebrewing, he’d been making mead for a while, along with the beer, and possibly other brews. I’m pretty sure that, when he and his wife built the house, they should have put a ramp into the basement, rather than stairs. No reason.
I’ve nev retsina nother person argue the case better.
Dr.Elizabeth Greene, please dive on Sunken Civ ! The barnacles come off easier.
LOL
They must be liberals. Can't think straight, so they conclude that the drinks were mixed.
Try quaffing a mixture of beer, mead and wine, have 2 or 3 in an hour , and you might as well be drinking mustard and water. Not to mention that if you manage to keep it down, there's hell to pay on the nether end.
I doubt that human physiology or gastrointestinal metabolism has changed that much.
Its a no brainer that the vessels were used to drink different beverages at different times. What you drank was driven by the seasons.
Beer in winter, wine in late summer and fall, and mead in the spring and summer.
Only the wealthy could afford to store and brew out of season.
Wait a minute. Did I type what I was thinkin’?
;’)
Dr. Green has just increased the enrollment of Brock U!
Lines will form to service her ballast tanks.
LOL.
Retsina:
WORST
HANGOVER
EVER
Excellent analysis. Well said.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
