Posted on 01/20/2022 9:25:28 AM PST by BenLurkin
A set of lengthy silver and gold tubes dug up from a famous grave in the the Caucuses have been found to represent the oldest surviving drinking straws, with the scientists behind the discovery believing they were used for communal beer consumption. The specimens are 5,000 years old and help deepen our understanding of drinking culture in ancient hierarchical societies.
The set of eight tubes was unearthed back in 1987 in the Maikop Kurgan burial mound, a famous grave for Bronze Age elites in the Northern Caucasus. Researchers had since concluded the meter-plus-long tubes to be poles for a canopy, or, with bull figurines featuring on some, scepters. Researchers at the Institute for the History of Material Culture, Russian Academy of Sciences decided to dig a little further into their history, hoping to flesh out the details around their use.
"A turning point was the discovery of the barley starch granules in the residue from the inner surface of one of the straws," said lead author Dr. Viktor Trifonov. "This provided direct material evidence of the tubes from the Maikop Kurgan being used for drinking."
The presence of these granules suggests the straws were used for drinking beer, which ties in with other evidence of such practices among the early Mesopotamian civilization of Sumeria from the third millennium BCE, hundreds of kilometers away. Artwork from this era shows people gathering around communal vessels using multiple long straws, which feature metal strainers to filter out impurities in ancient beer.
These metal strainers were also discovered in the Maikop straws, along with some other key similarities.
Seals from the fifth and fourth millennium BCE in Iran and Iraq show people using straws to drink from communal vessels, suggesting the practice stretches even further back in history.
(Excerpt) Read more at newatlas.com ...
THose guys must have been real suckers to get beer a yard up straws that wide. Did communal hookahs come from the same cultures?
Seems to me the bigger discussion should be on how they made those “straws”.
From the pictures, they look to be seamless, they’re very small in diameter and obviously quite long.
in before “this article sucks”
Either that, or guys have been sharing milkshakes with their girl for a lot longer than previously believed.
I read someplace, probably here, that because the beer was unfiltered there was a floating layer of grain husks and stuff on top. The straws got below that to get the good stuff.
Trivia: Maikop was just behind the limit of the German advance into the Caucasus in WWII.
The presence of barley, rather than cocaine, leads to beer being more likely than anything. Strainers within the straws eliminate barley soup as an option.
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