Posted on 08/01/2025 12:12:57 PM PDT by Red Badger
Archaeologists have re-examined a 2500-year-old residue found in bronze jars at an underground shrine in Paestum, Italy, previously identified as a wax/fat/resin mixture. Using a multianalytical approach, the authors have detected lipids, saccharide decomposition products, hexose sugars, and major royal jelly proteins supporting the hypothesis that the jars once also contained honey/honeycombs.
Paestum honey: (A) underground shrine in Paestum, Italy; (B) one of the hydrias on display alongside a Perspex box containing the residue at the Ashmolean Museum in 2019; (C) graphic representation of the arrangement of the bronze jars inside the shrine; (D) sample from the core of the residue. Image credit: da Costa Carvalho et al., doi: 10.1021/jacs.5c04888.
Honey was a pivotal substance in ancient societies.
Historical accounts and images indicate that honey was used as an early sweetener in medicinal preparations, in rituals, and in cosmetics.
In ancient Greek and Roman cultures, bees and honey held significant religious and symbolic importance.
Honey was believed to nurture wisdom, with myths suggesting that Zeus himself was fed honey as a child.
The identification of honey in archeological residues provides direct chemical evidence of bee product collection, exploitation, and processing, shedding light on early farming and subsistence strategies in different regions of the world.
In 1954, archeologists excavating in the ancient Greek settlement dating to around 520 BCE in Paestum in southern Italy found an underground shrine to an unknown deity containing bronze jars — six hydrae and two amphorae — surrounding an empty iron bed.
The jars contained a paste-like residue with a strong wax aroma.
Archaeologists reported the residue to have been originally a liquid or viscous liquid, as traces of it were found on the exterior of the vessels, which were originally sealed with cork disks.
Their excavation report emphasized the sacredness of the shrine: the empty bed and the inaccessibility of the shrine signify that the deity was there.
Moreover, the archeologists identified the original contents of the bronze jars as having been honey, a ‘symbol of immortality,’ originally offered as honeycombs but of which only beeswax remained as the main element.
However, three subsequent lab analyses of different samples of the residue excluded honey from its composition.
In 2019, when the Paestum residue arrived at the Ashmolean Museum for display at the Last Supper in Pompeii exhibition, it provided a new opportunity to reinvestigate its biomolecular composition, taking advantage of recent advances in mass spectrometry instrumentation.
University of Oxford researchers Luciana da Costa Carvalho and James McCullagh and their colleagues analyzed samples of the residue using several modern analytical techniques to determine its molecular makeup.
They found that the ancient residue had a chemical fingerprint nearly identical to that of modern beeswax and modern honey, with a higher acidity level that was consistent with changes after long-term storage.
The residue’s chemical composition was more complex than that of the heat-degraded beeswax, suggesting the presence of honey or other substances.
Where the residue had touched the bronze jar, degraded sugar mixed with copper was found.
Hexose sugars, a common group of sugars found in honey, were detected in higher concentrations in the ancient residue than in modern beeswax.
Royal jelly proteins — known to be secreted by the western honeybee — were also identified in the residue.
These results suggest that the ancient substance is what is left of ancient honey.
However, the researchers can’t exclude the possibility that other bee products may also be present.
“Ancient residues aren’t just traces of what people ate or offered to the gods — they are complex chemical ecosystems,” Dr. da Costa Carvalho said.
“Studying them reveals how those substances changed over time, opening the door to future work on ancient microbial activity and its possible applications.”
A paper describing the research was published today in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
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Luciana da Costa Carvalho et al. A Symbol of Immortality: Evidence of Honey in Bronze Jars Found in a Paestum Shrine Dating to 530-510 BCE. J. Am. Chem. Soc, published online July 30, 2025; doi: 10.1021/jacs.5c04888
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Ping!.................
Thanks!
It was a sweet find!.....................
Blah, blah, blah, say the academics. Honey does this, honey does that, yada yada yada.
Here’s the answer: honey tastes delicious. Who wouldn’t want to eat it?
It also kills bacteria and the ROMANS used it as a wound dressing, as did other civilizations.............
Was it mason jars?
The discovery is generating some buzz in the media.
It’s their hive mentality..............
No, it was a beekeepers jars.............
just nuke it for 15 seconds good as new
2500 year old honey?
What’s her name?
Rules - post pics.
Photo “C”, back to map-maker class, pronto! Arrow points down is marked “N”.
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