 |
Patrick Edward McGovern (born December 9, 1944) is the scientific director of the Biomolecular Archaeology Laboratory for Cuisine, Fermented Beverages, and Health at the University of Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia, where he is also an adjunct professor of anthropology. In the popular imagination, he is known as the "Indiana Jones of Ancient Ales, Wines, and Extreme Beverages" [1]
His academic background combined the physical sciences, archaeology, and history–an A.B. in chemistry from Cornell University, graduate work in neurochemistry at the University of Rochester, and a Ph.D. in Near Eastern archaeology and literature from the Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Department of the University of Pennsylvania.
Over the course of his more than three-decade career at the Penn Museum, his laboratory has been at the cutting edge of applying new scientific techniques to archaeology, often referred to as archaeometry or archaeological science.
A cesium magnetometer survey in 1978 in the Baq'ah Valley of Jordan, a Penn Museum project under the direction of McGovern, located one of the largest early Iron Age burial caves ever found in the southern Levant. [2] Some of the 227 excavated individuals in the tomb were adorned with pairs of iron anklets and bracelets. The analyses showed that the metal was a mild steel, among the earliest instances of this iron-carbon alloy ever found. [3]
The ancient pottery and glass vessel technology programs developed in the 1980s were highly innovative at the time and remain so. [4] [5]
Early in the 1980s, the laboratory pioneered the interdisciplinary field of Biomolecular Archaeology. This field promises to open up whole new chapters relating to human genetic and cultural development, including cuisine, medical practice, architecture and other crafts over the past 4 million years and more.
First came the chemical attestation of the earliest Royal or Tyrian Purple, the famous dye of the seafaring Phoenicians, demonstrating that ancient organic compounds (specifically, 6,6'-dibromoindigotin) could survive over 3000 years. [6] [7] [8] Amphora and vat sherds with purple residues on their interiors were recovered by a Penn Museum team at Sarepta (Sarafand) along the coast of Lebanon, the first homeland site in Phoenicia to be extensively excavated. Piles of molluscan shells of two of the three Mediterranean species ( Murex trunculus and M. brandaris ) yielding Purple, preferentially broken to extract the glands with the dye precursors, and kilns for heating the extracts, together with the chemical evidence, argued strongly that the sherds derived from an ancient Canaanite Purple dye factory.
In the early 1990s, the laboratory identified the earliest chemically confirmed instances of grape wine and barley beer from the Near East, viz., from Godin Tepe in Iran, ca. 3400-3000 B.C. [9] Several years later, the earliest date for wine was pushed back another two millennia to the Neolithic period (ca. 5400-5000 B.C.), based on analyses of jars from the museum's excavation at Hajji Firuz in Iran. [10] In a paper published 2017 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of historians and scientists explicated the biomolecular archaeological and archaeobotanical evidence for a further backdating to 6000–5800 B.C. [11] DNA studies of grape has shown that the Eurasian grape ( Vitis vinifera ) was probably domesticated in the mountainous Near East, in the region extending from the northwestern Zagros Mountains to Transcaucasia to the eastern Taurus Mountains, as early as 7000 B.C. [12] These investigations led to the Eurasian grape being chosen as the first fruit to have its genome fully sequenced.
Research at the start of the new millennium focused on the Neolithic period of ancient China's Yellow River valley. At the site of Jiahu, the laboratory discovered the earliest alcoholic beverage in the world dating back to about ca. 7000-6600 B.C. [13] It was a mixed fermented beverage of rice, honey, and grape and/or hawthorn ( Crataegus pinnatifida and C. cuneata ) fruit.
The laboratory and collaborators began studying some of the most ancient chocolate from ancient Mesoamerica (ca. 1400-1100 B.C.) in 2004 [14] Jars from Puerto Escondido in Honduras were in the shape of the cacao ( Theobroma cacao ) pod or fruit, as if to advertise the contents as being a chocolate beverage. The fruit's sweet pulp contains about 15% sugar, which naturally ferments to a 5 to 7% alcoholic beverage. This beverage might have led to the domestication of the tree. In later Mayan and Aztec times, the chocolate beverage was made from the beans (seeds) with additives including honey, chili peppers, fragrant flowers, etc. Like grape wine, rice wine, and barley beer in the Old World, chocolate "wine" went on to become the prerogative of royalty and the elite generally, and a focus of religion in the New World. No additives were detected in the early Puerto Escondido vessels, so it is likely that the chocolate beverage then was made only from the pulp.
The laboratory has embarked on a recent initiative ("Archaeological Oncology: Digging for Drug Discovery") to discover herbal and tree resin compounds in ancient alcoholic beverages that have anti-cancer and other medicinal properties. Alcohol readily dissolves organic compounds in botanicals, and provides a ready means to administer them by drinking or applying to the skin. Ancient humans had a huge incentive in trying to find any cure they could, and over millennia might well have discovered empirical solutions, even if they couldn't explain them scientifically. Superstition might well creep in, but in certain periods, like the Neolithic, humans were remarkably innovative in the domestication and probably the discovery of medicinal plants. They have been lost to us when the cultures collapsed and disappeared, but can now be rediscovered using Biomolecular Archaeology.
Archaeological Oncology can help speed up the drug discovery process and recover some of these lost remedies. For example, a biomolecular archaeological study of a liquid contained inside a tightly lidded Shang dynasty bronze vessel, dated to ca. 1050 B.C., indicated that a Chinese wormwood/mugwort species ( Artemisia annua and/or Artemisia argyi ) had been dissolved into a rice wine. [15] In vitro studies of the active medicinal compound in the plant—artemisinin or its synthetic derivative artesunate—have been shown to be remarkably effective against a whole range of cancers, including Lewis lung carcinoma, colon cancer (adenocarcinoma), Kaposi's sarcoma (connective tissue), uveal melanoma, hepatoma, ascitic liver tumor, ovarian cancer, pancreatic cancer, neuroblastoma, and myeloid leukemia.
Analyses of some of the earliest wine from the tomb of Scorpion I at Abydos, Egypt Ancient Egypt, dated to ca. 3150 B.C., has revealed the presence of a host of herbal additives, including herbs—savory ( Satureja ), Artemisia seibeni (a member of the wormwood family), blue tansy (Tanacetum annuum), balm ( Melissa ), senna (Cassia), coriander (Coriandrum), germander (Teucrium), mint ( Mentha ), sage ( Salvia ), and/or thyme (Thymus/Thymbra). [16] Some active compounds in these plants have also shown to have in vitro anti-cancer effects [15] The jar residues also yielded the earliest fragments of ribosomal DNA (as long as 840 base pairs) from a precursor of the wine/beer/bread yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae [17]
In the late 1990s, the laboratory and collaborators analyzed the extraordinarily well-preserved organic residues inside the largest known Iron Age drinking-set, excavated inside the burial chamber of the Midas Tumulus at Gordion in Turkey, ca. 740-700 B.C. [18] The reconstruction of the "funerary feast"–which paired a mixed or extreme fermented beverage of grapes, barley and honey, viz. wine, beer and mead ("Midas Touch," see below) with a spicy, barbecued lamb and lentil stew–is the first time that an ancient meal has been re-created based solely on the chemical evidence.
The gala re-creation of the feast was at the Penn Museum in 2000; other dinners have been held in California, Michigan, and Washington, D.C. A re-creation at the tomb itself was filmed for a Channel 4 special in Britain–the beverage, made by the Kavaklidere winery, was served in and drunk from re-created vessels, and local villagers from Polatli prepared the stew by grinding the lentils in basalt mortars and barbecued the meat on open-fire spits.
McGovern took his scientific study of ancient alcoholic beverages one step further by re-creating them, both to learn more about how ancient humans accomplished what they did and to bring the past alive. His collaboration with Dogfish Head Brewery led to the commercial version of Midas Touch, the brewery's most awarded brew in major tasting competitions, Chateau Jiahu (based on the earliest alcoholic beverage from China), and Theobroma (an interpretation of the ancient cacao beverage and named after the tree). Maize or corn chicha was a non-commercial experiment, following traditions of the ancient Inca empire, in which native Peruvian red maize was chewed to break the carbohydrates down into sugars; pepperberries and strawberries were also added. A re-creation of an ancient Egyptian brew (Ta-Henket = ancient Egyptian "bread-beer"), which is based on archaeobotanical and Biomolecular Archaeological evidence dating between ca. 16,000 and 3150 B.C., was released in early December 2011.
McGovern is well known for his book on Ancient Wine: The Search for the Origins of Viniculture (Princeton University, 2003/2006), [19] which received the Grand-Prix in Histoire, Littérature et Beaux-arts from the International Organisation of Vine and Wine plus two other awards.
His most recent book, Uncorking the Past: The Quest for Wine, Beer, and Other Alcoholic Beverages (Berkeley: University of California), [20] received an award from the Archaeological Institute of America.
In addition to over 150 periodical articles, he has written or edited another eight books, including The Origins and Ancient History of Wine (Gordon and Breach, 1996), [21] Organic Contents of Ancient Vessels (MASCA, 1990), [22] Cross-Craft and Cross-Cultural Interactions in Ceramics (American Ceramic Society, 1989), [23] and Late Bronze Palestinian Pendants: Innovation in a Cosmopolitan Age (Sheffield, 1985). [24] In 2000, his book entitled The Foreign Relations of the "Hyksos": A Neutron Activation Study of Middle Bronze Age Pottery from the Eastern Mediterranean (Oxford: Archaeopress) was published. [25]
Fifteen international stories have also publicized his laboratory's discoveries to a wider public around the world in print media, on TV and radio, and over the internet. The laboratory's research has been profiled in seven video programs, including a full-length feature filmed at the Midas Tumulus in Turkey (above). Its findings have been the focus of museum exhibits in Philadelphia, Athens, the Napa Valley, France, and elsewhere.
As a consulting scholar in the Near East Section of the Penn Museum, he has also directed the Baq'ah Valley (Jordan) Project over the past 25 years, [2] and has been involved with many other excavations throughout the Middle East as a pottery and stratigraphic consultant. A detailed study of the New Kingdom Egyptian garrison at Beth Shan, an older Penn Museum excavation, also appeared in 1994 in the Museum Monograph series, entitled The Late Bronze Egyptian Garrison at Beth Shan. [26]
As an adjunct professor in the anthropology department at Penn, he has taught courses on molecular archaeology and archaeological ceramics.
A drink or beverage is a liquid intended for human consumption. In addition to their basic function of satisfying thirst, drinks play important roles in human culture. Common types of drinks include plain drinking water, milk, juice, smoothies and soft drinks. Traditionally warm beverages include coffee, tea, and hot chocolate. Caffeinated drinks that contain the stimulant caffeine have a long history.
Wine is an alcoholic drink made from fermented fruit. Yeast consumes the sugar in the fruits and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Though wine can be made from a variety of fruit crops such as plum, cherry, pomegranate, blueberry, currant and elderberry, it is most often made from grapes, and the term "wine" generally refers to grape wine when used without a qualifier.
Mead, also called hydromel, is an alcoholic beverage made by fermenting honey mixed with water, and sometimes with added ingredients such as fruits, spices, grains, or hops. The alcoholic content ranges from about 3.5% ABV to more than 20%. The defining characteristic of mead is that the majority of the beverage's fermentable sugar is derived from honey. It may be still, carbonated, or naturally sparkling; dry, semi-sweet, or sweet.
There is a long history of alcoholic drinks in China. They include rice and grape wine, beer, whisky and various liquors including baijiu, the most-consumed distilled spirit in the world.
Jiahu was the site of a Neolithic settlement based in the central plain of ancient China, near the Yellow River. It is located between the floodplains of the Ni River to the north, and the Sha River to the south, 22 km (14 mi) north of the modern city of Wuyang, Henan Province. Most archaeologists consider the site to be one of the earliest examples of the Peiligang culture. Settled around 7000 BC, the site was later flooded and abandoned around 5700 BC. The settlement was surrounded by a moat and covered a relatively large area of 55,000 square meters. At one time, it was "a complex, highly organized Chinese Neolithic society", home to at least 250 people and perhaps as many as 800.
Dogfish Head Brewery is a brewing company based in Milton, Delaware founded by Sam and Mariah Calagione and, as of 2019, owned by the Boston Beer Company. It opened in 1995 and produces 262,000 barrels of beer annually.
Purposeful production of alcoholic drinks is common and often reflects cultural and religious peculiarities as much as geographical and sociological conditions.
Beer is one of the oldest human-produced drinks. The first chemically confirmed barley-beer – from the area of Mesopotamia, part of modern-day Iraq – dates back to the 5th millennium BCE. The written history of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia records the use of beer, and the drink has spread throughout the world; a 3,900-year-old Sumerian poem honouring Ninkasi, the patron goddess of brewing, contains the oldest surviving beer-recipe, describing the production of beer from barley bread, and in China, residue on pottery dating from around 5,000 years ago shows that beer was brewed using barley and other grains.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to wine:
Persian wine, also called May, Mul, and Bâdah, is a cultural symbol and tradition in Iran, and has a significant presence in Iranian mythology, Persian poetry and Persian miniatures.
Fermentation is a metabolic process that produces chemical changes in organic substances through the action of enzymes. In biochemistry, it is broadly defined as the extraction of energy from carbohydrates in the absence of oxygen. In food production, it may more broadly refer to any process in which the activity of microorganisms brings about a desirable change to a foodstuff or beverage. The science of fermentation is known as zymology.
In food processing, fermentation is the conversion of carbohydrates to alcohol or organic acids using microorganisms—yeasts or bacteria—under anaerobic (oxygen-free) conditions. Fermentation usually implies that the action of microorganisms is desired. The science of fermentation is known as zymology or zymurgy.
The oldest evidence of ancient wine production has been found in Georgia from c. 6000 BC , Iran from c. 5000 BC, Greece from c. 4500 BC, Armenia from c. 4100 BC, and Sicily from c. 4000 BC. The earliest evidence of fermented alcoholic beverage of rice, honey and fruit, sometimes compared to wine, is claimed in China.
Wine has a long history in China. Although long overshadowed by huangjiu and the much stronger distilled spirit baijiu, wine consumption has grown dramatically since the economic reforms of the 1980s. China is now numbered among the top ten global markets for wine. Ties with French producers are especially strong, and Ningxia wines have received international recognition.
Hajji Firuz Tepe is an archaeological site located in West Azarbaijan Province in north-western Iran and lies in the north-western part of the Zagros Mountains. The site was excavated between 1958 and 1968 by archaeologists from the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. The excavations revealed a Neolithic village that was occupied in the second half of the sixth millennium BC where some of the oldest archaeological evidence of grape-based wine was discovered in the form of organic residue in a pottery jar.
An alcoholic beverage is a drink that contains ethanol, a type of alcohol and is produced by fermentation of grains, fruits, or other sources of sugar. The consumption of alcoholic drinks, often referred to as "drinking", plays an important social role in many cultures. Alcoholic drinks are typically divided into three classes—beers, wines, and spirits—and typically their alcohol content is between 3% and 50%.
Winemaking has a long tradition in Egypt dating back to the 3rd millennium BC. The modern wine industry is relatively small scale but there have been significant strides towards reviving the industry. In the late nineties the industry invited international expertise in a bid to improve the quality of Egyptian wine, which used to be known for its poor quality. In recent years Egyptian wines have received some recognition, having won several international awards. In 2013 Egypt produced 4,500 tonnes of wine, ranking 54th globally, ahead of Belgium and the United Kingdom.
A spectacular collection of furniture and wooden artifacts was excavated by the University of Pennsylvania at the site of Gordion, the capital of the ancient kingdom of Phrygia in the early first millennium BC. The best preserved of these works came from three royal burials, surviving nearly intact due to the relatively stable conditions that had prevailed inside the tomb chambers. The Gordion wooden objects are now recognized as the most important collection of wooden finds recovered from the ancient Near East.
The Areni-1 winery is an ancient winery that was discovered in 2007 in the Areni-1 cave complex in the village of Areni in the Vayots Dzor province of Armenia by a team of Armenian and Irish archaeologists. The excavations were carried out by Boris Gasparyan of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia and Ron Pinhasi from University College Cork (Ireland), and were sponsored by the Gfoeller Foundation (USA) and University College Cork. In 2008 the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) also joined the project with Gregory Areshian as co-director of the Areni Project. Since then the excavations have been sponsored by UCLA and the National Geographic Society as well. The excavations of the winery were completed in 2010.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
