Washington:
Humans’ adore for cheese and beer goes back a lengthy way. But according to a scientific study published Wednesday, workers at a salt mine in Austria had been currently enjoying blue cheese and beer as far back as 2,700 years ago.
Scientists made the discovery by analyzing samples of human excrement discovered at the heart of the Hallstatt mine in the Austrian Alps. The study was published in the journal Current Biology on Wednesday.
Frank Maixner, a microbiologist at the Eurac Research Institute in Bolzano, Italy, who was the lead author of the report, mentioned he was shocked to understand that salt miners more than two millennia ago had been sophisticated adequate to “use fermentation intentionally.”
“This is very sophisticated in my opinion,” Maixner told AFP. “This is something I did not expect at that time.”
The getting was the earliest proof to date of cheese ripening in Europe, according to researchers.
And when alcohol consumption is definitely properly documented in older writings and archaeological proof, the salt miners’ feces contained the 1st molecular proof of beer consumption on the continent at that time.
“It is becoming increasingly clear that not only were prehistoric culinary practices sophisticated, but also that complex processed foodstuffs as well as the technique of fermentation have held a prominent role in our early food history,” mentioned Kerstin Kowarik of the Museum of Natural History Vienna.
The town of Hallstatt, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, has been utilised for salt production for more than 3,000 years, according to Maixner.
The neighborhood “is a very particular place, it’s located in the Alps, in the middle of nowhere,” he explained. “The whole community worked and lived from this mine.”
The miners spent their whole days there, working, consuming and going to the bathroom proper there, at the mine.
It is thanks to the continual temperature of about 8C (46F) and the higher concentration of salt at the mine that the miners’ feces had been preserved especially properly.
Researchers analyzed 4 samples: one dating back to the Bronze Age, two from the Iron Age, and one from the 18th century.
One of them, about 2,700 years old, was discovered to include two fungi, Penicillium roqueforti and Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Both are recognized today for their use in meals creating.
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