6,000-Year-Old Cave Find Shows Sicilians Made Wine Way Before Previously Thought

Ancient Origins

Researchers have found traces of wine in Sicily dating back to the 4th millennium BC. According to experts, that could mean that Italians have been making and drinking wine for much longer than previously believed.

 Oldest Italian Wine Found
A group of scientists led by Dr. Davide Tanasi from the University of South Florida, analyzed a small amount of remaining wine on an ancient jar found in a cave in Sicily. The results showed traces of tartaric acid and its sodium salt, which occur in grapes and the wine-making process, meaning that the region’s wine production possibly began in the early fourth millennium BC as The Guardian reports.

The jars found in a Sicilian cave were found to have small traces of wine residue. (Image: Dr. Davide Tanasi, University of South Florida)

The finding, published in Microchemical Journal, is considered extremely important as it’s the earliest discovery of wine residue in the entire prehistory of the Italian peninsula. In other words, the discovery could reshape the history of winemaking in Italy, since previous recovery of seeds and samples made archaeologists (falsely) believe that winemaking developed in Italy during the Middle Bronze Age, around 1300-1100BC.

“Unlike earlier discoveries that were limited to vines and so showed only that grapes were being grown, our work has resulted in the identification of a wine residue,” Dr. Tanasi tells The Guardian. He continues, “That obviously involves not just the practice of viticulture but the production of actual wine – and during a much earlier period.”

The jars were found in a cave near Monte Kronio, Agrigento, Sicily (ConsorzioTouristicodeiTempli)

Still not the Oldest Wine in Europe’s History?
The newly found Copper Age containers may contained traces of 6,000 years old wine, making it the oldest known Italian wine, but is it the oldest wine in Europe’s history? Not likely. As previously reported in an Ancient Origins article, archaeologists excavating a prehistoric settlement site in northern Greece in 2013, completed analyses of wine samples from ancient ceramics revealing evidence of wine dating back to 4200 BC, which makes it still the oldest known sample of wine in Europe.

This sample was located at an ancient settlement known as Dikili Tash, 1.2 miles from the ancient city of Philippi and has been inhabited since 6500 BC. Not much is known about the people who lived at Dikili Tash during these periods as of yet, so the 2013 findings offered some insight into these ancient people, although the societal changes that may have been influenced by the consumption of alcohol is still an issue of debate.

"Mosaic of the cupbearers", from the 2nd century AD. J.-C., from Dougga, in the National Museum of Bardo, Tunisia (CC BY 3.0)

 "The find is highly significant for the European prehistory, because it is for the moment the oldest indication for vinification in Europe," said Dimitra Malamidou, co-director of the 2013 excavation at the site. "The historical meaning of our discovery is important for the Aegean and the European prehistory, as it gives evidence of early developments of the agricultural and diet practices, affecting social processes," she added.

Wine boy at a Greek symposium. He uses an oinochoe (wine jug, in his right hand) to draw wine from a crater, in order to fill a kylix (shallow cup, in his left hand). Tondo of an Attic red-figure cup, ca. 490-480 BC. (Public Domain)

It is believed that the wine traces in Dikili Tash represent the oldest known traces of wine drinking in Europe. Previous studies have unearthed a 6,100-year-old Armenian winery, and beyond Europe, scientists have found traces of a 9,000-year-old Chinese alcohol made from rice, honey and fruit.

New Find Sheds Light on Vinification in Ancient Sicily
From the so far findings, the team of researchers conducting the study has managed to understand how the ancient Italians were using the pottery jar and what they were drinking almost 6,000 years ago, “The goal was that to shed new light on the use of certain ceramic shapes and infer some hypothesis about ancient dietary habits,” they write as IBTimes reported. And add, “Insights into the diets of early societies can be gained, indirectly, from the cultural evidence of artifacts related to food procurement, preparation and consumption, and [from] human skeletal remains.”

However, scientists suggest that more direct proof for dietary habits derived from the distinguishing of intact plant and animal remains collected during the excavations but also from the analysis of the amorphous remains of foodstuff associated with artifacts.

 Wine Could be an Offering to Gods According to Experts
Ultimately, Dr. Tanasi told CNN that the wine may have been left in the cave as an offering to underground deities. “The cave site of Monte Kronio is also a cult place used for religious practices from prehistory to Classical times,” Tanasi said. And added, “This discovery has important archaeological and historical implications.”

The next step for his team is to find out whether the wine was red or white, according to Dr. Tanasi’s statement.

Top image: Fresco depicting two lares pouring wine from a drinking horn (rhyton) into a bucket (situla), they stand on either side of a scene of sacrifice, beneath a pair of serpents bringers of prosperity and abondance, Pompeii, Naples Archaeological Museum (CC BY-SA 2.0)

 By Theodoros Karasavvas

Just How Rich Were the Inhabitants of Magna Graecia Really?

Ancient Origins

A team of archaeologists excavating in the Italian city of Paestum (Poseidonia), has uncovered the remnants of a palatial structure and indispensable ceramics. Almost 2,500 years ago, Poseidonia was part of Magna Graecia’s (“Great Greece’s”) most significant sanctuaries.

Magna Graecia’s Glorious Past
Magna Graecia was the name given in antiquity by the Romans to the group of Greek colonies which encircled the shores of Southern Italy, in the present-day regions of Campania, Apulia, Basilicata, Calabria and Sicily that were extensively populated by Greek settlers.

 The name is not found in any extant author earlier than Polybius, who mentions the cities of Magna Graecia during the time of Pythagoras by using the expression, “the country that was then called Magna Graecia” (Pol. 2.39). However, many historians believe that the name possibly had arisen already at an early stage of Greek history, probably during a period that the Greek colonies in Italy were at the height of their power and prosperity and before many famous city-states of Greece had reached their peak.

The Greek expansion into Southern Italy began in the 8th century BC and the settlers would bring with them their Hellenic civilization, which was to leave a lasting imprint in Italy, such as in the culture of ancient Rome. Greek colonists founded a number of city states on both coasts of the peninsula from the Bay of Naples and the Gulf of Taranto southwards and all-round the narrow coastal plain of Sicily.

Ancient Greek colonies and their dialect groupings in Southern Italy (Magna Graecia). (Public Domain)

 In their hey-day these city states, founded by farmers, traders, and craftsmen, represented the “new rich” of the Greek world. Their temples were bigger, their houses more ornate, and their aristocracy lived a life of pampered luxury. Trade between the Italian colonies and their founding cities in mainland Greece prospered, and Magna Graecia became the center for two philosophical groups: Parmenides founded a school at Elea and Pythagoras another at Croton. Croton was also famed to have the finest physicians in the Greek world and was the home of one of the greatest ancient athletes, Milo, who was a six times champion in wrestling at both the Olympic and Pythian games.

Coins from Magna Graecia. (CC BY SA 2.5)

 New Findings at Poseidonia Clearly Show the Affluence of its Greek Founders
Despite many of the Greek inhabitants of Southern Italy getting totally Italianized during the Middle Ages, the immense impact of Greek culture and language has survived to present day. One major example of this is Griko people, an ethnic Greek community of Southern Italy that can be mainly found in regions of Calabria and Apulia.

Another major example would be all the discoveries that have taken place in Southern Italy, with the most recent being a block-built building and the new artifacts in Poseidonia as Greek Reporter recently reported.

Archaeologists excavating a structure which is believed to date from when the settlement of Poseidonia was founded in southern Italy. (Parco Archeologico di Paestum)

Poseidonia was established by Greek colonists from the Gulf of Taranto around 400 BC. The city would later fall under the rule of an indigenous Italic people known as the Lucanians, who changed the city’s name.

The remains of the recently unearthed large structure, which most likely served as either a palace or a very luxurious household, seems to have been constructed within the same time period as the Doric-style temples of the Greek gods Athena, Hera, and Poseidon - for which Poseidonia was best known in antiquity.

Second temple of Hera, also called Neptune temple or Poseidon temple, Paestum (Poseidonia), Campania, Italy. (Norbert Nagel/CC BY SA 3.0)

Besides the large building, as New Historian reports, archaeologists have also uncovered a respectable amount of Attic red-figure style pottery – a proficiency invented in Athens after the Greek Dark Age -which influenced the rest of Greece, especially Boeotia, Corinth, the Cyclades, and the Ionian colonies in the east Aegean – along with other luxury objects, which clearly show how rich the city’s Greek founders became catering to the travelers and believers who came to worship at the temples. Other finds include vessels used for cooking, eating, and drinking.

An Attic vase fragment found at the Paestum site in southern Italy. It depicts the Greek god Hermes. (Parco Archeologico di Paestum)

By Theodoros Karasavvas

Top Image: A richly decorate vase in the National Archaeological Museum of Paestum, Italy. Source: CC BY SA 3.0

More Orichalcum, the Atlantis Alloy, Turns Up with Helmets at a Sicilian Shipwreck, What Was its Use?

Ancient Origins

Researchers have recovered yet more ingots, possibly of the fabled metal orichalcum, from a ship that sank off the coast of Sicily around 2,600 years ago. The find has led some to ponder whether the mythical island of Atlantis, where the legendary alloy was supposed to have been created, was real. The shipwreck, however, dates to about seven millennia later than the legend of Atlantis.

 In 2015, researchers diving near the shipwreck found 39 ingots of a copper, zinc, and charcoal alloy that resembles brass. They believe it may be the ancient metal orichalcum. The new cache of the same metal consists of 47 ingots.

Some of the orichalcum ingots found near a 2,600-year-old shipwreck off the coast of Sicily. (Superintendency of the Sea, Sicily)

While the metal is rare, it is not as precious as researchers expected from reading ancient Greek philosopher Plato’s description of it in the Critias dialogue. Plato said only gold was a more precious substance than orichalcum.

Plato said only gold was a more precious substance than orichalcum. Here are two of the recently discovered ingots. (Sebastiano Tusa/ Superintendency of the Sea, Sicily)

Several ancient thinkers mention the alloy in writings - as far back as Hesiod in the 8th century BC. Until 2015, the metal had never been found in any appreciable quantities, says an article about the find on Seeker.com. Scholars have debated the origin and composition of orichalcum for a long time.

The shipwreck was found near two others about 1,000 feet (305 meters) off the coast of the Sicilian city of Gela. The wrecks were submerged in about 10 feet (3 meters) of water. Researchers think the ship went down in a storm, while close to the port.

Underwater archaeologists and some of the other artifacts found at the site. (Superintendency of the Sea, Sicily)

"The waters there are a priceless mine of archaeological finds," Adriana Fresina told Seeker.com. She works with archaeologist Sebastiano Tusa, Sicily’s superintendent of the seas.

Greek myth says Cadmus, a Phoenician and the first king of Thebes, invented orichalcum.

Cadmus, the Greek mythological figure who is said to have created orichalcum. (Public Domain)

Christos Djonis wrote an article for Ancient Origins in 2015 about the find of the 39 ingots and said of a news reports at that time:

 “… unfortunately, none of the stories exposed anything new on Atlantis, or on the ‘mystical’ ore, as one reporter called it. Essentially, every editorial capitalized on repeating the same familiar story, raising the usual questions, and sadly arriving at the same past conclusions. Nothing new! As for the particular freight, most reporters connected it to Atlantis, as if Atlantis was around during the Bronze Age (thus, misleading everyone not so familiar with the story) and ignoring the fact that according to Plato, the story of Atlantis took place around 9,600 BC.

Artist’s representation of Atlantis. (Source: BigStockPhoto)

Djonis writes that the orichalcum cargo likely originated on Cyprus, another island in the Mediterranean. Every known alloy containing copper has been produced, including orichalcum, on Cyprus since the 4th millennium BC.

Plato wrote that orichalcum covered the walls, columns and floors of Poseidon’s temple. He wrote the only metal that surpassed it in value was gold. "The outermost wall was coated with brass, the second with tin, and the third, which was the wall of the citadel, flashed with the red light of orichalcum," Plato wrote. Poseidon’s laws were also inscribed onto a pillar of orichalcum, according to Plato.

The city of Gela on Sicily was rich and had many workshops that produced fine objects. Researchers believe the orichalcum pieces were en route to those workshops for use in decorations and fashion objects.

Altogether, the researchers have discovered 47 new ingots of varying sizes and shapes. (Sebastiano Tusa, Soprintendenza del Mare-Regione Sicilia)

Apart from this metal, the shipwreck also yielded two bronze Corinthian helmets.

“The presence of helmets and weapons aboard ships is rather common. They were used against pirate incursions,” Tusa told Seeker.com. “Another hypothesis is that they were meant to be an offer to the gods.”

The Corinthian helmets. (Salvo Emma, Soprintendenza del Mare-Regione Sicilia)

Tusa and his colleagues are still at work on the shipwreck and expect to recover more cargo.

Top Image: Some of the orichalcum ingots and the two Corinthian helmets found near a 2,600-year-old shipwreck off the coast of Sicily. Source: Superintendency of the Sea, Sicily

By Mark Miller

Italian Archaeologists Find a Rare Solar Observatory Hewn Into Rock to Highlight the Winter Solstice

Ancient Origins

A group of friends surveying World War II bunkers in Sicily, Italy, uncovered something much older—a rock on a hill with a circular hole that was apparently carved into it through which the winter sun still shines the morning of the solstice. It is a sundial that has been dubbed the Stonehenge of Italy. Archaeologists who examined the holey stone say it dates as far back as 6,000 to 3,000 years.

Archaeoastronomy Professor Alberto Scuderi, a regional director with Italy’s Archaeologist Groups, studied the stone after amateur archaeologist Giuseppe La Spina and his friends discovered it on November 30, 2016.

Finally, on the winter solstice of December 21, experts determined that the stone was used to determine seasons and solstices. They used a compass, a GPS drone, cameras and video equipment to verify that the sundial worked.

"At 7:32 am the sun shone brightly through the hole with an incredible precision," Mr. La Spina told Live Science. "It was amazing."

Professor Scuderi completed his work on January 3 and was to present a report on the stone to the Gela Archaeological Museum.

The stone arrangement is near three prehistoric cemeteries—Grotticelle, Dessueri and Ponte Olivo. The closest town is Gela, on the southern Sicilian coast.

This rock-hewn tomb at Syracuse, reportedly that of Archimedes, is of a type found near the sundial in Gela, Sicily. (Wikimedia Commons/Photo by Codas2)

“Making an archaeological discovery is in itself an important event, but to be part of one of the most sensational finds in recent years fills me with pride,” Mr. La Spina told the Local.

He added that this Bronze Age monument was special to him personally because he and his group found it near his hometown of Gela.

Mr. La Spina said the discovery of the sundial with its 3.2-foot (1-meter) diameter hole may mean even more archaeological treasures are there to be discovered. He hopes for new finds that will shed light on the distant past of his hometown.

The 7-meter-tall (23-foot tall) stone’s special ritual importance becomes even clearer in the context of the sacred ground upon which it was found. Around the end of the 3rd millennium BC, there were burials nearby called grotticella tombs that were carved out of rock by people of the Castelluccio culture that held sway in Sicily.

La Spina and his associates also found a stone called a menhir at the eastern side of the sundial. They believe the stone was upright when it was taken there, but it fell at some point later. The menhir is 5 meters tall (16.4 feet) and in front of it is a pit.

The sundial stone and menhir have different geological compositions, which experts think indicate the menhir was imported to the site from elsewhere.

This is not the only stone with a man-made hole found so far on Sicily. Professor Scuderi said he found two others, near Palermo, that were made in prehistoric times.

"One lined up with the rising sun at the winter solstice, the other produced the same effect with the rising sun at the summer solstice," Scuderi told Live Science . "For this reason, I believe that another holed calendar stone, marking the summer solstice, may be found near Gela."

Featured image: The morning sun shines through the stone with the hole, an event marking the beginning of winter on December 21. (Credit: Giuseppe La Spina)

By Mark Miller

History Trivia - Mount Etna (Sicily) erupts

March 11

1669 Mount Etna (Sicily) erupted. 990,000,000 cubic yards of lava were thrown out over four months, destroying a dozen villages. Ashes formed a double cone more than 150 ft high, now called Monti Rossi.

Archaeologists in Sicily excavate an ancient Greek city remarkably preserved beneath earth and sand

Ancient Origins

In 409 BC, Carthaginian troops from North Africa slaughtered and enslaved the 16,000 soldiers and residents of Selinunte, a Greek metropolis whose ruins were preserved in ancient times by blowing earth and sand. Working for many years, archaeologists have examined and excavated the entire city to find 2,500 houses, the streets and harbor and an industrial zone that produced exquisite pottery.
Archaeologists have compared Selinunte to Pompeii in the degree of preservation. Pompeii, on the Italian mainland, was buried in ash when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD.
About 15 percent of Selinunte, including a spectacular acropolis and temples, had remained above-ground and was visited on what the British of the Georgian and Victorian used to call the Grand Tour. They called it the City of the Gods. More than 500 years ago a temblor knocked down those buildings. Two of the temples were re-built in the mid-20^th century and have been a tourist attraction ever since.

“Selinunte is the only classical Greek city where the entire metropolis is still preserved, mainly buried under sand and earth. It therefore gives us a unique opportunity to discover how an ancient Greek city functioned,” Martin Bentz of the University of Bonn, head of excavations now underway at Selinunte, told The Independent.

This pot, which was made in Selinunte, shows a rider with a spear and an attendant. (Photo by Marie Lan-Nguyen/Wikimedia Commons)

Before Selinunte, scholars had found not one single entirely intact ancient Greek city and were able to study only fragmentary city plans and ancient city life. The study of Selinunte has shed much light on the ancient world and its demographics and lifestyles. Researchers never knew how many residents there were in any ancient Greek cities until Selinunte.
Archaeologists found a half-eaten meal inside a dozen bowls around a hearth in a building that burned during the invasion and will analyze the food residue. They have also found dozens of unfired ceramic pots and tiles in the city, which was a major producer of ceramics. Terrified locals apparently left these products unfired because the invasion interrupted their work.
Recent excavations have brought to light pottery kilns and entire workshops. Archaeologists have found pigments used to paint the ceramics and 80 kilns, including large circular ones for producing roof tiles and amphorae jars and a dozen large rectangular kilns for firing giant amphorae and coffins. In smaller kilns, workers fired weights, tableware and small statues of the gods.
The ceramicists had a chapel for worshiping a working-class goddess, Athena Ergane of Athena of the Workers, and Artemis, Demeter and Zeus, the supreme deity.

A pottery piece made in Selinunte showing Artemis with a bow and arrow in front of an altar (Photo by Marie-Lan Nguyen/Wikimedia Commons)

Scholars are examining pottery from around the Mediterranean to determine how much of it originated in Selinunte, which produced much more than it could use on its own. They estimate the city’s residents produced 300,000 ceramic pieces per year, but less than 20 percent of that was for domestic use. In addition, amphorae produced in Selinunte may have been used to transport the city’s surplus wheat and olive oil, The Independent says.
Researchers have been studying Selinunte’s man-made harbor and will use geophysical surveys to find the foundations of warehouses that would have been positioned around it. Artifacts in the city’s shops and houses, including pottery, glass and bronze pieces from Egypt, Turkey, southern France and northern Italy, show that ships from far and wide docked in the harbor.
The city, which overlooks the Mediterranean Sea, didn’t exist for very long. Ancient Greeks founded it between 650 and 630 BC. A bit more than 200 years later, Carthage attacked and killed and enslaved its defenders and residents.
The Carthaginians, at war with Greece, besieged the city for nine days and then breached its walls and overwhelmed its defenders.

“What followed was an orgy of destruction, torture, rape, murder and looting that was considered abhorrent even by the standards of those days,” says the site Best of Sicily. “According to Diodorus Siculus, about 16,000 of Selinunte's estimated 25,000 or so civilians were butchered outright and 7,000 were enslaved. Only a scant two thousand managed to escape the bloodbath and make their way to Agrigento.”

The Carthaginians repopulated the city some, but it never regained its former power or prestige. During the first Punic War with Rome in 250 BC, Carthaginian forces destroyed the city before fleeing Roman troops.
Featured image: The interior of what researchers call Temple E in Selinunte (Photo by Evan Erickson/Wikimedia Commons)
By: Mark Miller

History Trivia - first official lottery held in England

January 11

802 St. Paulinus of Aquileia died. He was royal master of grammar to Charlemagne at the Palace School and was appointed Patriarch of Aquileia (Italy) in 787 after Charlemagne conquered the duchy.

1569 The first official lottery was held in England, with 10 shilling lots sold at old St Paul's Cathedral.

1558 Westmunster Church in Middelburg (The Netherlands) was destroyed by a heavy storm.

1571 the Austrian nobility were granted freedom of religion.

1693 Mt. Etna erupted in Sicily. The powerful earthquake destroyed parts of Sicily and Malta.