The world's oldest drinking straws are made of Slender gold and silver tubes.
The metal tubes were found in 1897 while archaeologists were excavating a burial mound from the ancient Maikop culture in the northwestern Caucasus, which includes modern-day Armenia, Georgia, and parts of southern Russia. Scientists couldn't figure out the purpose of the tubes.
The tubes would have been used to drink beer with friends from a communal vessel.
The fine tubes are not as simple as they seem, according to the first author of the study. The bull figurines attached to them can be both a decoration and a technical element for balancing the device.
In photos: Treasures of Mesopotamia.
The straws were found in a large kurgan with three compartments, each holding the remains and grave goods of an individual from the Maikop culture.
V. Trifonov et al. are from antiquity.
There are gold and silver tubes with gold bull figurines, 5 silver tubes with silver bull figurines, and 7 silver tubes. The objects with the tips pointing upwards are assumed to be shown in this figure.
Hundreds of beads made of semiprecious stones and gold, ceramic vessels, metal cups, weapons, and tools were held in the largest chamber.
The walls of the chamber were lined with goods. Four of the metal tubes had a gold or silver bull figurine and were placed on the right side of the skeleton.
Various archaeologists wondered if the tubes were scepters, poles for a canopy, or a bundle of rods that fit into arrowheads.
The team decided to reanalyze the tubes because they weren't convincing and they didn't address why they were tubes.
V. Trifonov et al. are from antiquity.
The design of the'scepter' components includes one of eight silver tips, a joint between two segments of the silver tube, and a probable longitudinal seam.
To them, the answer was obvious: The tubes were likely drinking straws.
This idea is similar to other archaeological discoveries.
The researchers said that ancient people in the Near East made beer from barley around 13,000 years ago. There are seal impressions of people drinking through straws from the fifth to the fourth millennium BCE, when large-scale brewing began in Western Asia.
Queen Puabi, who was buried with long straws at the Royal Cemetery at Ur in modern-day Iraq, was found to have drank beer through long reeds.
The History of Material Culture/Russian Academy of Sciences was written by V. Trifonov.
There are three silver tips that are in their original position and have enlarged images of the design.
The team found evidence of grains from a lime tree, as well as cereals, on the inside of one of the artifacts. The results should be treated with caution as the researchers aren't sure if the barley had been made into beer.
The design, number of tubes, residue analysis and several critical similarities with Sumerian straws led us to conclude that the Maikop tubes are drinking straws.
"Ancient Near East art from the third millennium BCE onwards depicts multiple long straws placed in a communal vessel, allowing people standing or sitting nearby to drink together," he said.
There are amazing views of Italian cocktails.
The metal strainers on the Maikop tubes would help remove the impurities common in ancient beer.
Aren Maeir, an archaeologist and professor at Bar-Ilan University in Israel who has studied similar drinking straws from later contexts, said the research sounds quite convincing.
The drinking tubes were reconstructed. V. Trifonov et al. are from antiquity.
Maeir told Live Science in an email that he would have liked to have had more analyses of the straws.
The Royal Cemetery at Ur has the next-oldest surviving straws on record, which date back 4,500 years.
There are straws on display at the State Hermitage Museum. The study was published in a journal.
There are related content.
There are photos of a Bronze Age battlefield.
The chariot burial is from the Bronze Age.
The village holds Bronze Age treasures.
The article was published by Live Science. The original article can be found here.
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