18 ms·

Early Celts believed wine should be for all

33 points by diodorus 7y ago

mothsonasloth 7y ago
The Celts were lots of independant nations, so would Scottish Celts and Irish Celts be likely to share this custom with their Alpine counterparts?
- willvarfar 7y ago
  One of the measures of being an ancient celt was culture more than ethnicity. In the same way that the Britons became Anglosized after the fall of Rome so the Picts has became Celticized centuries earlier. One of the pythons did a really good series on the celts and I think it’s on YouTube.
thrower123 7y ago
Standard pop-archaeology stuff. Sweeping conclusion based on ambiguous data from one particular site, check. The meat of the real data here seems to be that, before there were fancy drinking vessels reserved for the purpose of drinking wine from, people drank wine out of any old bowl or jar that was handy.
- code_duck 7y ago
  It surprises me the sort of conclusions that some scientists draw from data. Considering that modern people in prison make wine from grape juice and old pieces of bread, why would random people living in isolation 4000 years ago not make their own wine? As far as vessels, anecdotally, I make fancy wine glasses, but personally drink wine out of coffee cups from the thrift store or whatever is handy.
  - jiofih 7y ago
    Standard HN comment stuff. Making comments ignoring the gist of the article, check. Sorry for the sarcasm, here are the relevant quotes: > There is no evidence of grape seeds or winemaking in central Europe, the authors note, so it must have been imported > Tartaric acid is usually considered to be a grape product/wine marker because of its high concentration in grapes in contrast to other fruits available in Europe during the Early Iron Age
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - code_duck 7y ago
      Thank you for devoting your valuable time to setting me straight. Complaining about the quality of HN comments while commenting on HN is pretty standard HN comment stuff.
  - dmurray 7y ago
    The article refers specifically to people in modern-day Germany drinking grape wine imported from Mediterranean countries.
- marcus_holmes 7y ago
  There's a lot of assumptions baked into archaeology, inherited from the early days when gentlemen scientists wandered around digging things up randomly and pronouncing on them. We get Vikings in horned helmets from the same phenomenon. One of the assumptions is that life was "nasty, brutish, and short". The other, that early societies were very hierarchical and had a huge difference in living standards. There's not much evidence to support either, but that has been the baseline assumption for decades, because it reflected the beliefs of the Victorians. Modern archaeology has to publish papers with evidence to counter these baseline assumptions. So having a paper that says that most people were able to afford to drink wine is good, because it counters a baseline assumption (based on no evidence) that only rich people could afford imported wine.
  - gmac 7y ago
    I did some archaeology as an undergrad, and found it full of amusing/annoying conventions in this regard. “Ritual significance” was a (heavily used) euphemism for “no clue what this was for”. And who could forget the Law of Stratigraphy, which says that things that are deeper are older?
    - marcus_holmes 7y ago
      "ritual purposes" is the bane of anyone trying to interpret finds. Because whoever dug it up doesn't say "I don't know what this is" and therefore throws it open to interpretation, instead they say "ritual purposes" and anyone trying to interpret the find has to start by saying "this isn't a ritual object because...". Archaeologists never have to specify which ritual was involved, or what part in the ritual the object took. Which you have to do for everything else. That one condition would massively improve archaeological find interpretation imho.
brandmeyer 7y ago
At least in Italy, wine was used as a store of primary calories. The grape harvest only lasts for a few weeks out of the year. Winemaking was a method to buffer those calories at harvest time and consume them throughout the year. So yeah, everyone is drinking wine.

33 points by diodorus 7y ago

The Celts were lots of independant nations, so would Scottish Celts and Irish Celts be likely to share this custom with their Alpine counterparts?

willvarfar 7y ago
One of the measures of being an ancient celt was culture more than ethnicity. In the same way that the Britons became Anglosized after the fall of Rome so the Picts has became Celticized centuries earlier. One of the pythons did a really good series on the celts and I think it’s on YouTube.

thrower123 7y ago

Standard pop-archaeology stuff. Sweeping conclusion based on ambiguous data from one particular site, check. The meat of the real data here seems to be that, before there were fancy drinking vessels reserved for the purpose of drinking wine from, people drank wine out of any old bowl or jar that was handy.

code_duck 7y ago
It surprises me the sort of conclusions that some scientists draw from data. Considering that modern people in prison make wine from grape juice and old pieces of bread, why would random people living in isolation 4000 years ago not make their own wine? As far as vessels, anecdotally, I make fancy wine glasses, but personally drink wine out of coffee cups from the thrift store or whatever is handy.
- jiofih 7y ago
  Standard HN comment stuff. Making comments ignoring the gist of the article, check. Sorry for the sarcasm, here are the relevant quotes: > There is no evidence of grape seeds or winemaking in central Europe, the authors note, so it must have been imported > Tartaric acid is usually considered to be a grape product/wine marker because of its high concentration in grapes in contrast to other fruits available in Europe during the Early Iron Age
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - code_duck 7y ago
    Thank you for devoting your valuable time to setting me straight. Complaining about the quality of HN comments while commenting on HN is pretty standard HN comment stuff.
- dmurray 7y ago
  The article refers specifically to people in modern-day Germany drinking grape wine imported from Mediterranean countries.
marcus_holmes 7y ago
There's a lot of assumptions baked into archaeology, inherited from the early days when gentlemen scientists wandered around digging things up randomly and pronouncing on them. We get Vikings in horned helmets from the same phenomenon. One of the assumptions is that life was "nasty, brutish, and short". The other, that early societies were very hierarchical and had a huge difference in living standards. There's not much evidence to support either, but that has been the baseline assumption for decades, because it reflected the beliefs of the Victorians. Modern archaeology has to publish papers with evidence to counter these baseline assumptions. So having a paper that says that most people were able to afford to drink wine is good, because it counters a baseline assumption (based on no evidence) that only rich people could afford imported wine.
- gmac 7y ago
  I did some archaeology as an undergrad, and found it full of amusing/annoying conventions in this regard. “Ritual significance” was a (heavily used) euphemism for “no clue what this was for”. And who could forget the Law of Stratigraphy, which says that things that are deeper are older?
  - marcus_holmes 7y ago
    "ritual purposes" is the bane of anyone trying to interpret finds. Because whoever dug it up doesn't say "I don't know what this is" and therefore throws it open to interpretation, instead they say "ritual purposes" and anyone trying to interpret the find has to start by saying "this isn't a ritual object because...". Archaeologists never have to specify which ritual was involved, or what part in the ritual the object took. Which you have to do for everything else. That one condition would massively improve archaeological find interpretation imho.

brandmeyer 7y ago

At least in Italy, wine was used as a store of primary calories. The grape harvest only lasts for a few weeks out of the year. Winemaking was a method to buffer those calories at harvest time and consume them throughout the year. So yeah, everyone is drinking wine.