Food rots fast. Therefore it is cause for great history-nerd celebration
when archeologists dig up food preserved centuries past its expiration
date. Here are seven of the most venerable victuals:
- 1.
ROMAN TOMB WINE –
When Romans died, they liked to be buried in style. Because of that, a
bottle of their wine has reached our modern world. The wine, found by
excavators in Germany, is the oldest known that is still in a liquid
state. It was discovered in one of two sarcophaguses, alongside many
other bottles that had long since dried up. This bottle stayed wet
because the olive oil used (in place of a cork) to protect the wine from
oxidizing did its job really well. And what was the result of 1600
years of aging? The contents are both waxy and silty, and the alcohol
content is long gone. Still, the bouquet is quite piquant, obstinate
even. Recommended pairing is roasted ox. - 2.
BURNT BRITISH BREAD –
Some say it was a garbage pit, some think it was place of religious
offering. Whatever it was originally, by the 21st century it had become a
big hole, flooded with water, and it had small pieces of burnt bread
and other Neolithic odds and ends floating in it. The bread was the most
important discovery. Found in Oxfordshire, England, and estimated to be
5500 years old, the overcooked bread was mistaken for charcoal at
first. Then one of the archeologists noticed crushed grains of barley
inside of it. If the age is correct, it would have been made by some of
the first people to enter Britain from Europe. - 3.
BONE SOUP –
While excavating to make way for a new airport, Chinese workers struck
liquid gold. Well, liquid gold if you happen to be an archeologist. Or
really into soup. The soup, sealed so tightly in its bronze cooking pot
that it was still in a liquid state, was discovered in a tomb near Xian.
It didn’t look too savory, having turned green from 2400 years of
bronze oxidation. It also still contained bones, which delighted
archeologists, probably because they didn’t actually have to eat it.
- 4.
BOG BUTTER –
In Ireland of 3000 years ago, there were limited options for storing
your 77 pound barrels of butter. Archeologists are eternally grateful
that the inhabitants near a Kildare bog chose to sink theirs into peat,
and then forgot about it, because it was still there in 2009. Amazingly,
it was intact but for one split, and still full of butter. The butter
has lost some of its creamy richness in the interceding millennia,
turning to a fatty white wax called adipocere. The National Museum of
Ireland conservator Carol Smith says the public will never know how it
tastes. “It’s a national treasure,” she said. “You can’t be going
hacking bits of it off for your toast!” - 5.
THE ORIGINAL NOODLES –
Everyone says they invented the noodle first. The Chinese, the
Italians, the Arabs, they all want credit for that staple of the
impoverished college student’s dinner. But thanks to a discovery at the
Lajia archeological site on the Yellow River in China, the debate may be
over. No other historic noodle has even come close to Lajia’s 4000 year
old noodles cache. In the aftermath of an ancient earthquake, the
Yellow River flooded, causing disaster to those who lived along it. In
his haste to get away, one unfortunate diner left his bowl of millet
grass noodles overturned. “It was this unique combination of factors
that created a vacuum or empty space between the top of the sediment
cone and the bottom of this bowl that allowed the noodles to be
preserved,” archeologist Kam-biu Liu said. - 6.
CHOCOLATE –
This 110 year old tin of chocolate does not date from antiquity like
the rest of the food on this list, but it still might be the world’s
oldest chocolate. There is evidence that chocolate (usually liquid) was
made in ancient times, but not much actual chocolate candy has been left
uneaten long enough to become antiquated. This little box comes from
Scotland, and was made especially to commemorate the coronation day of
King Edward VII in 1902. The chocolate passed from the original
schoolgirl who abstained from eating it, mother to daughter, until it
was donated to the St. Andrews Preservation Trust in 2008.
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