Which civilization first used/made wine?

Question

links would be nice

Lisa - you got any links/sources on that? i am interested

Answer 1

china.

http://www.museum.upenn.edu/new/exhibits/online_exhibits/wine/wineintro.html

The Neolithic[1], or "New" Stone Age, was a period in the development of human technology that is traditionally the last part of the Stone Age. The Neolithic era follows the terminal Holocene Epipalaeolithic periods, beginning with the rise of farming, which produced the "Neolithic Revolution" and ending when metal tools became widespread in the Copper Age (chalcolithic) or Bronze Age or developing directly into the Iron Age, depending on geographical region.

Neolithic culture appeared in the Levant (Jericho, Palestine) about 8500 BC. It developed directly from the Epipaleolithic Natufian culture in the region, whose people pioneered wild cereal use, which then evolved into true farming. The Natufians can thus be called "proto-Neolithic" (11,000-8500 BC). As the Natufians had become dependent on wild cereals in their diet, and a sedentary way of life had begun among them, the climatic changes associated with the Younger Dryas forced people to develop farming. By 8500-8000 BC farming communities arose in the Levant and spread to Anatolia, North Africa and North Mesopotamia.

Early Neolithic farming was limited to a narrow range of crops, both wild and domesticated, which included einkorn wheat, millet and spelt and the keeping of sheep and goats. By about 7000 BC it included domesticated cattle and pigs, the establishment of permanently or seasonally inhabited settlements, and the use of pottery.[2] Not all of these cultural elements characteristic of the Neolithic appeared in the same order: the earliest farming societies in the Near East did not use pottery, and, in Britain, it remains unclear to what extent plants were domesticated in the earliest Neolithic, or even whether permanently settled communities existed. In other parts of the world, such as Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia, independent domestication events led to their own regionally-distinctive Neolithic cultures which arose completely independent of those in Europe and Southwest Asia. Early Japanese societies used pottery in the Mesolithic for example.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolithic

Answer 2

People thought it came from Mesopotamia until they recently found evidence that it came from ancient Persia. They just discovered clay pots that have wine residue in them.. This is currently the oldest known source.

Answer 3

I have read several times ancient Persia was the first civilization to learn how to make wine; such an irony that today wine is forbidden there.

Answer 4

Neolithic peoples from Turkey who used naturally-fermented grapes.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/07/0721_040721_ancientwine.html

Answer 5

It began to be made in Mesopotamia and was discovered by accident. The Greeks are credited with making it popular

Answer 6

Cavemen

Answer 7

First Wine? Archaeologist Traces Drink to Stone Age
William Cocke
for National Geographic News

July 21, 2004
Wine snobs might shudder at the thought, but the first wine-tasting may have occurred when Paleolithic humans slurped the juice of naturally fermented wild grapes from animal-skin pouches or crude wooden bowls.

The idea of winemaking may have occurred to our alert and resourceful ancestors when they observed birds gorging themselves silly on fermented fruit and decided to see what the buzz was all about.


"The whole process is sort of magical," said Patrick McGovern, an expert on the origins of ancient wine and a leader in the emerging field of biomolecular archaeology. "You could even call [fermentation] the first biotechnology," said McGovern, who is based at Philadelphia's University of Pennsylvania.

Combining archaeology with chemical and molecular analysis, McGovern has carved a niche for himself as an expert in ancient organics—particularly wine. He has already pushed our knowledge of vinicultural history back to Neolithic times (the late Stone Age). Now McGovern is searching in eastern Turkey for the origins of grape domestication.

The scientist lacks the physical evidence to prove his hypothesis that hunter-gatherers made what he calls "Stone Age beaujolais nouveau." But he has shown, through a combination of archaeological sleuthing and chemical analysis, that the history of wine extends to the Neolithic period (8,500-4,000 B.C.) and the first glimmerings of civilization.

Gods and Grapes

The wild Eurasian grapevine (Vitis vinifera sylvestris) is found from Spain to Central Asia. Cultivars, or varieties bred from the vine, account for nearly all of the wine produced today.

McGovern is attempting to establish the origin of the earliest Neolithic viniculture—where grapevines were cultivated and winemaking developed. By comparing DNA from the wild grape with that of modern cultivars, McGovern and his colleagues hope to pinpoint the origin of domestication.

The scientist recently returned from an expedition to Turkey's Taurus Mountains near the headwaters of the Tigris River. There, he combed rugged river valleys in search of wild grapevines untouched by modern cultivation methods. McGovern was joined by José Vouillamoz, from Italy's Istituto Agrario di San Michele all'Adige in Trento, and Ali Ergül, from Turkey's Ankara University.

"We're looking in eastern Turkey, because that's where other plants were domesticated," McGovern said in a telephone interview before his trip. "We're going out there to collect wild grapevines with local cultivars, so we can see what the relationship is and maybe make a case that this is where the first domestication occurred."

One dramatic setting for the researchers' grapevine collecting was a deeply cut ravine below the site known as Nemrut Daghi. "A first-century B.C. ruler, Antiochus I Epiphanes, had statues of himself in the company of the gods hewn out of limestone on a mountaintop at about 7,000 feet [2,130 meters]," McGovern said.

The remote area includes the important Neolithic site of Çayönü. From this and other archaeological digs, McGovern collected pottery and stone fragments to test for ancient organic material—perhaps the residue of long-evaporated, locally produced wine.