Wine, Women and Song

As I have mentioned before, I am fascinated by the early emergence of trends, fashions, and cultures. The following is a selection of the latest news in several areas.

James Wright of American Scientist has reviewed Patrick McGovern's new "Ancient Wine: The Search for the Origins of Viniculture", which he calls "riveting, informative and thought-provoking". The book

"begins with the hypothesis that during the Paleolithic era people drank fermented grapes ... which, in McGovern's fertile mind, may link their probable source in Transcaucasia with the yet-to-be-demonstrated hypothesis that the Black Sea was originally an inland lake, flooded catastrophically with seawater in the mid-6th millennium B.C. The tantalizing bouquet of these first chapters is fortified by the taste of real evidence in the form of traces of tartaric acid in Neolithic storage jars from Iran, the remains of grape pips at several Near Eastern sites, and the early and consistent production of wine (and domaines and vintages) in ancient Egypt ... The story of the wine culture that developed in the ancient Near East and spread throughout the Mediterranean is complex and appears to follow the intertwined histories of early empires and states in the three millennia from ancient Ur to the Roman empire. "

Clearly this drinking business has been with us a mighty long time. As, of course, has music. Simple flutes and whistles made from bone have been found dating backing nearly 100,000 years. However, in Ireland recently was discovered the world's oldest wooden instruments -- a set of pipes that appear to be about 4,000 years old. The six pipes are hollow,

"measuring between 30 centimetres and 50 centimetres long are tapered at one end but have no perforations or finger holes ... Experts have been able to play a series of notes, including E flat, A flat and F natural, on the yew wood pipes."

It is hard to say to what use these pipes would have been put: religious ceremonies, perhaps, or dancing, or just plain fun, or all of these. With the discovery of an ancient brassiere (yes, Virginia, there was life before Victoria Secret!), the use is no mystery; it is the age that fascinates. Chinese archaeologist Shao Guotian, working at a Liao Dynasty (916 - 1125) tomb in a village in Xinhui town, Aohan Banner of the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region in north China, has announced the discovery of a 1000-year old brassiere, padded with cotton.

"It was made of fine silk and had shoulder strings and back strings just like brassieres of today," said Shao.

It should be no surprise to find the Chinese constructing such pieces when, it seems, they had complex machines some 2,500 years ago.

"Distinctive spiral patterns carved into a small jade ring show that China was using complex machines more than 2500 years ago, says a Harvard graduate student in physics. The ring was among the goods found in high-status graves from China's "Spring and Autumn Period" from 771 to 475 BC. Most archaeological attention has focused on larger and more spectacular jade and bronze artifacts. But Peter Lu identified the patterns on the small rings as Archimedes' spirals, which he believes are the oldest evidence of compound machines. Simple machines that move in only one way date back at least 5000 years, to the invention of the potter's wheel. But it took much longer to invent compound machines, which precisely convert motion from one kind into another."

Lu suggests the carving could have been accomplished with a simple variation of the bow drill familiar from starting fires in the Boy Scouts.