‘Evolved’: Ancient faeces show humans enjoyed beer and blue cheese 2,700 years ago | anthropologist

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It’s no secret that beer and blue cheese go hand in hand – but a new study reveals how deep their roots are in Europe, where workers in a salt mine in Austria have been devouring both for as long as 2,700 years.

Scientists made this discovery by analyzing samples of human waste found in the heart of the Hallstatt mine in the Austrian Alps.

Frank Meixner, a microbiologist at the Orac Research Institute in Bolzano, Italy, who was the report’s lead author, said he was surprised to learn that salt miners more than 2,000 years ago were advanced enough to “purposefully use fermentation.”

“That’s too complicated in my opinion,” said Meixner. “This is something I wasn’t expecting at the time.”

The discovery was the first clue to the ripening history of cheese in Europe, according to the researchers.

And while alcohol consumption is certainly well documented in ancient writings and archaeological evidence, the excrement of salt miners contained the first molecular evidence of beer consumption on the continent at the time.

“It is becoming increasingly clear that not only were prehistoric culinary practices sophisticated, but also that complex processed foodstuffs as well as fermentation technology played a prominent role in our early food history,” Christine Koarek, of the Natural History Museum in Vienna, She said.

Hallstatt, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, has been used to produce salt for more than 3,000 years.

The community, Meixner said, is “a very special place, it’s in the Alps, in the middle of nowhere.” “The whole community worked and lived from this mine.”

The miners spent their entire days there working, eating, and going to the bathroom in the mine.

Thanks to a constant temperature of about 8 °C (46 °F) and the high concentration of salt in the mine, the miners’ excrement has been well preserved.

The researchers analyzed four samples: one from the Bronze Age, two from the Iron Age and one from the 18th century.

One of them, about 2,700 years old, was found to contain two types of fungi, Penicillium roqueforti and Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Both are known today for their use in making food.

“The miners in Hallstatt seem to have intentionally applied food fermentation techniques with microorganisms that are still used nowadays in the food industry,” said Maixner.

The researchers also studied the miners’ diet, which consists mainly of grains, some fruit, beans, and meat as a source of protein.

“Diet is exactly what miners need, in my opinion,” Meixner said. “It’s obviously balanced and you have all the key ingredients you need.”

The main difference in menus today is the degree of food processing, which was very low at that time. Miners of the Bronze and Iron Age used whole grain, which indicates the consumption of a type of porridge. For miners in the 18th century, the grain appeared ground, indicating that they ate bread or crackers.

Another result of the study was the composition of the miners’ microbiome, or the range of bacteria present in their bodies.

In the four samples studied, the microbiota was very similar to those in modern non-Western populations, which tend to lead a more traditional lifestyle.

The study said this indicated a “recent transformation” in the microorganisms of industrial humans, “perhaps due to modern lifestyle, diet or medical advances”.

However, germs are often associated with various modern diseases, Meixner said. According to him, determining exactly when this change occurred can help scientists understand why it happened.

The study was published in the journal Current Biology on Wednesday.

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