People enjoy drinking wine for 6,000 years

Near a remote Armenian village, which is within 60 miles of Mount Ararat, scientists have unearthed a surprisingly advanced winemaking operation, surrounded by storage jars, and say it dates back 6,000 years, making it the earliest known site in the world for wine-making with grapes, by far.

Gregory Areshian, an archaeologist and co-director of the dig, told Washington Post that it was a proof that "people were making wine here well before there were pharaohs in Egypt."

Up to this find, archaeologists have reported finding evidence such as grape seeds, grape skins, ceramic jars with a yellow residue consistent with wine, although never fully accepted proof, of wine drinking dating to 6000 BC.

However, the cellar discovered in Armenia leaves no room for doubt - it is a place where wine was made by means of a press, grapes and herbal pigments.

The shape and placement of the wine press indicates locals stamped the grapes with their feet and collected the wine in fermentation jars placed below to capture the liquid.

It is highly unusual for organic material to remain intact so long, but the dry conditions of the cave, its constant temperature and then a covering layer of sheep dung deposited long ago have created a treasure trove of objects from the period called the Copper Age.

The discovery adds to the importance of the Areni cave, which in 2009 yielded the oldest known leather shoe and a red basket buried alongside an infant. The mocassin, made of leather and straw, was carbon-dated to be about 5,500 years old.

Patrick McGovern, scientific director of the Biomolecular Archaeology Laboratory of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology has reported finding chemical residue of wine in jars from 5,000 to 5,500 BC from a site in northwestern Iran. McGovern also said the Armenian find is considerably broader, with evidence of not only wine drinking, but full-scale winemaking.

Ararat

Gregory Areshian

University of California

Patrick McGovern

Museum of the University of Pennsylvania

ancient Egyptian King Scorpion I

wine