Ever thought straws would have existed 5000 years ago? Eight silver and gold tubes held in a Russian museum have long been thought to have been either ceremonial staffs or canopy supports. In reality, the long tubes are the oldest surviving drinking straws, archeologists say.
Archeologists re-examining a trove of objects from a Bronze Age burial mound in the Caucasus first excavated in the 19th century believe that decorated gold and silver tubes were not sceptres or canopy supports as first thought,
According to various reports, people used these high-end straws to drink beer from a communal vessel more than 5,000 years ago, conclude archaeologist Viktor Trifonov of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg and colleagues.
Excavations in 1897 in what’s now Armenia uncovered the metal tubes, jewelry and other goods in a burial mound containing three individuals from the Maikop culture, which dates to between about 5,700 and 4,900 years ago.
The burial mound, also called a kurgan, at Maikop was first excavated by Professor Nikolai Veselovsky of St. Petersburg University in 1897 and swiftly became famous for its rich burial and extensive cultural artifacts. The kurgan contained a large chamber divided into three differently-sized compartments, each with the remains of an adult in a crouched position.
The skeleton was covered in the remains of a rich garment, with hundreds of beads of semi-precious stones and gold, and the compartment was full of grave goods – including a set of eight long, thin gold and silver tubes, four of which were decorated with a small gold or silver bull figurine.
Each slender tube extends for just over one meter. Four of the finds include a gold or silver bull figurine, punctured by a hole so that it could be slid up and down the tube. Meanings attributed to straws with or without figurines are unknown, Trifonov’s group says.
The study notes the craftsmanship of the tubes, which have sliding and movable parts made out of separate thin gold and silver segments that were soldered together while the archeologists argue in the new study that the advanced design of the tubes was for sipping a type of beverage that required filtration during consumption.
The common ancient Sumerian method for drinking beer was to use a tube made of a long reed, which allowed the user to sit or even stand and drink from large vessels positioned on a low pedestal.
Beer brewing began as early as around 13,000 years ago in the Middle East. And seal impressions on clay tablets dating to roughly 7,000 years ago in Iraq and Iran depict people drinking with straws.
