Posted on 01/11/2011 10:39:07 AM PST by La Lydia
Archeologists have unearthed the oldest wine-making facility ever found, using biochemical techniques to identify a dry red vintage made about 6,000 years ago in what is now southern Armenia. The excavation paints a picture of a complex society where mourners tasted a special vintage made at a caveside cemetery, the researchers reported on Tuesday in the Journal of Archaeological Science.
"This is the world's oldest known installation to make wine," Gregory Areshian of the University of California Los Angeles, who helped lead the study, said ...
Carbon dating showed a desiccated grape vine found near a wine press was grown around 4000 BC, his team reported. This makes it 1,000 years older than any other wine-making facility discovered, the team from Armenia, the United States and Ireland reported...
The wine press would have held a few gallons of juice and crushed grapes, likely working with the time-honored technique of barefoot stomping, Areshian said.
"This was a relatively small installation related to the ritual inside the cave. For daily consumption they would have had much larger wine presses in the regular settlement," said Areshian, who was deputy prime minister in the first government of the independent Republic of Armenia in 1991.
Chemical traces point to grape juice and, given the lack of refrigeration, the juice would certainly have been fermented into wine, Areshian said...
The expedition, paid for in part by the National Geographic Society, also uncovered copper processing equipment. Areshian said the team would detail those findings later.
The cave complex, known as Areni-1, is in the Little Caucasus Mountains near Armenia's southern border with Iran.
The press itself is a shallow clay basin about three feet (one meter) in diameter, surrounded by grape seeds and dried-out grape vines...
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Wow. We were making wine within 15 years of the creation of the universe!
Amazing innit?
dregs of civilization ping
You beat me to it.
I recall the shoe. We should get quite a good look at this culture given the remarkable state of preservation.
Dang, beat me!!!!
};^P>
ping
At 6,000 years old, skeleton found next to wine press is oldest drunk yet found
This is hugh and series!!!!!!
No trees were killed to make this press.
Makes ‘em prettier too...
Wouldn't the wine press eliminate the need for old fashioned barefoot stomping?
Nonsense. Even the most ardent YEC will acknowledge (or even insist) that the first living things of whatever type would or could have been created "full grown".
I'm surprised it took Adam and Eve tens of years to figure out that fermented grape juice had distinct advantages over the raw kind ...
The New Year’s Eve parties, those first 15 years, were very boring.
Judaism (upon whom the YEC rely) readily admits the calendar is increasingly unreliable the farther one gets from the Second Temple.
The insistence upon it being literal is unique to Christians, I believe.
Get your copper kettle,
Get your copper coil,
Get yourself some corn mash,
And never more you'll toil...
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