Strange discoveries: 4 foods that have survived for thousands of years
When it comes to expiry dates, food items don’t usually do too well- even with all the preservatives. However, archaeologists have been lucky to discover some food items during certain excavations that date back to several centuries! Of course, they are way past their expiration date now and they definitely cannot be consumed. However, they remained preserved enough over the years to have been identified by scientists. Here are some of these foods and beverages, and the origins behind them.
Pieces of bread found in Oxfordshire, Great Britain
Seems like something was in the over for far too long! Small pieces of charred bread were discovered in a pit in the English city of Oxfordshire. According to archaeologists, these pieces are around 5,500 years old. This means that they date all the way back to the Neolithic age. The burnt fragments were initially mistaken to be pieces of charcoal. However, when studied through a microscope, it appeared that they contained crushed grains of barley. It is believed that the bread was made by migrants from mainland Europe who settled in England and worked as farmers.
Butter stored in bogs in Ireland
Bog butter is essentially an ancient waxy edible substance that was found buried in peat bogs in Ireland close to 3000 years ago. Ancient inhabitants of this tiny Western European nation chose to store their butter in this method, only to forget about it over time. Archaeologists discovered a barrel of this bog butter in 2009. It was in a mostly intact condition, with the wooden container still full to its brim with the butter. However, it had clearly failed to retain its creamy richness, as it had transformed into a fatty white substance known as adipocere. It is a wax-like organic substance which is formed by the process of anaerobic bacterial hydrolysis of fat in tissue.
An old bar of Cadbury chocolate
Chocolate is primarily native to Central and South America, where cocoa beans are grown on a large scale. It was brought to Europe by Spanish travellers voyaging all around the globe in the 16th century. Archaeologists stumbled upon a sample of a bar made by the popular chocolate brand, Cadbury, which dates all the way back to 1902. It was also accompanied by a souvenir tin box which appeared to have been commemorating the coronation of King Edward VII, as there were portraits of him and his wife, Alexandra on the lid. This discovery now resides at Scotland’s Annan Museum.
Chinese soup stored in a bronze pot
In the process of excavating the ground in order to build a new airport in Xian, the Chinese workers would have surely built up an appetite. Luckily, through their hard, laborious work, they happened to unearth a 2400-year-old sealed bronze cooking pot which still somehow contained liquid bone broth! However, it did not look too appetising as it had turned green after going through the process of bronze oxidation for over 2 millennia.