section_path: History/Ancient period
section_name: Ancient period
paragraph_text: Ancient period
  
  The Carmona Wine Urn is a first century Roman glass urn containing intact wine. Discovered in 2019 in Carmona, Spain during excavations of the city's western Roman necropolis, analysis of the urn's contents five years after has deemed the vessel as the oldest surviving wine in the world, surpassing the previous record older, the Speyer wine bottle (discovered in 1867) by three centuries.
  
  Beer was likely brewed from barley as early as 13,000 years ago in the Middle East. Pliny the Elder wrote about the golden age of winemaking in Rome, the 2nd century BCE (200–100 BCE), when vineyards were planted.
  
  Examination and analysis of ancient pottery jars from the neolithic village of Jiahu in the Henan province of northern China revealed residue left behind by the alcoholic drinks they had once contained. According to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, chemical analysis of the residue confirmed that a fermented drink made of grape and hawthorn fruit wine, honey mead and rice beer was being produced in 7000–5600 BC (McGovern et al., 2005; McGovern 2009). The results of this analysis were published in December 2004.
  
  The earliest evidence of winemaking was dated at 6,000 to 5,800 BCE in Georgia in the South Caucasus.
  
  Celtic people were known to have been making types of alcoholic cider as early as 3000 BC. and wine was consumed in Classical Greece at breakfast or at symposia, and in the 1st century BC.