20 Of The Oldest Foods Ever Discovered, Ranked By Grossness
We’ve all experienced it: opening the refrigerator door to be hit by the waft of sour milk long past its “Use by” date. Or that moment where you first detect the funky smell in your home office from the half-eaten ham sandwich forgotten under a pile of papers. Mind you, if you think that’s disgusting, then check out these foods unearthed by archaeologists, some of which date back thousands of years. Bon appetit!
20. Not-so-vile vintage bubbly
Okay, so we’re starting with a bit of an outlier, because this find actually tasted pretty great – but our brave guinea pigs didn't know that before taking a sip! When divers uncovered the cargo of a sunken wreck in the Baltic Sea in 2010, they assumed it was bottles of ordinary wine. But when they popped the cork, Champagne started to flow. It’s thought it was destined for Russia in the 1780s, making it about 230 years old: the oldest vintage fizz still consumable. So they did. Diver Christian Ekstrom said, “It tasted fantastic. It was a very sweet Champagne, with a tobacco taste and oak.”
19. Never-too-old honey?
Another odd one, this: honey is a substance that apparently doesn’t ever go bad, although it may change color, lose its smell and flavor or crystalize over time. But when ceramic jars were dug up from the tomb of a Georgian noblewoman it was thought to be the oldest ever discovered. Indeed, they estimated it was about 5,500 years old. So if a jar of the sweet stuff was ever going to disappoint, we’re guessing that this was the one. After all, would you want to eat something that's been sitting next to a dead body for thousands of years? Maybe not?
18. Mummified cheese
Archaeologists got a real food fright when they dug up a Bronze Age cemetery in the Taklamakan Desert, China, in the early 2000s. The 200 mummies they unearthed were not only wearing their burial clothes, but there was something more attached around their necks: cheese. Both their bodies and the dairy delicacy had been preserved by the desiccated and saline properties of the soil for 4,000 years.
17. Extremely aged wine
There's no denying Rome's history is a rich and varied one, encompassing wars, revolts and even the rise and fall of empires. Well, there was a sealed bottle of wine that survived it all too. It was uncovered from the tomb of a Roman nobleman some 1,700 years after it was buried. Its hefty wax seal and olive oil content preserved the beverage.
