The Oldest Wine in Europe Was Just Discovered in Greece https://greekreporter.com/2021/06/27/oldest-wine-europe-ancient-greece...

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The Oldest Wine in Europe Was Just

Discovered in Greece
By Thomas Kissel June 27, 2021

Ancient grape seeds confirm that Greeks have been drinking wine for millennia. Credit: Nivet Dilmen, CC
BY-SA 3.0

The oldest wine in Europe was discovered recently in ancient Philippi,

northern Greece, the Department of History and Archaeology of the
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki announced.

The University presented research that indicates that making and

drinking wine in Europe originates from prehistoric Greece.

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Thousands of ancient grape seeds and pomace were found in ancient

Philippi house whose contents were preserved in a fire that occurred
in 4300 B.C.

The Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Department of Archaeology

has been conducting archaeobotanical research for the last twenty
years. The research began with the use of archeological flotation, an
archaeobotanical sampling technique where an archaeological
deposit is placed in a flotation tank with water that dissolves the
deposit until fragments of plants and other material float to the top.

Sultana-Maria Valamoti, professor of Prehistoric Archaeology, director

of the Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Research in Archaeology/ EDAE
and the PlantCult Laboratory at the Center for Interdisciplinary
Research and Innovation of the AUTH, said that “These first steps
were the starting point that led to today’s findings.

“Thousands of liters of soil have been processed by the method of

flotation and a variety of archaeological sites have already been or
are being researched archaeobotanically.

“Thanks to the work done at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki,

this data, often neglected by research, provides a wealth of
information on the social and economic organization in northern
Greece, the daily activities of people, their farming and agricultural
practices, as well as specific symbolic activities from the 7th to the
1st millennium BC” Valamoti added.

University has been researching prehistoric Greece

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for decades
The Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Department of Archeology,
who conducted the research and where Valamoti is a professor of
prehistoric archaeology, has been at the vanguard of archeological
research in Greece.

For years the department was led by George Hourmouziadis, the

former Professor Emeritus of prehistoric archaeology, who led
excavations in many prehistoric settlements in Thessaly and
Macedonia (such as Dimini, Arkadikos and Dramas, etc.)

In 1992 he started the excavation of the neolithic lakeside settlement

of Dispilio in Kastoria, Northwestern Greece. A myriad of items were
discovered, which included ceramics, structural elements, seeds,
bones, figurines, personal ornaments, three flutes (considered the
oldest in Europe) and the Dispilio Tablet.

The discovery of the wooden tablet was announced at a symposium

in February 1994 at the University of Thessaloniki. The site’s
paleoenvironment, botany, fishing techniques, tools and ceramics
were published informally in the June 2000 issue of Eptakiklos, a
Greek archaeology magazine.

“I speak and I write using the soil as raw material… this soil is not
similar to that which we put in our pots every autumn. It is the soil
of a strange garden, a garden where, thousands of years before,
people like us, walked on the marks of their toil, anger, and of their
rush and calm which they left behind. They left the footprints of their
lives,” he noted on the occasion of the publication of his book “Logia
kai Coma (Words and Soil).”

Hourmouziadis passed away in 2013.

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