Originally published at: Here are the world's oldest drinking straws, used to sip beer in ancient times | Boing Boing
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So we really don’t have to make them out of plastic…
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I imagine people were using reeds & similar for much, much longer than 5,000 years. But those probably didn’t survive.
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no word yet if they put ice in their wine
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How would straw #1 work? It appears to have holes in the sides.
but the scale shows they were less than 10cm
That may have been an end piece. Down at the bottom (in the picture) it looks like it could have been fitted to a larger piece, maybe a hollow reed.
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Ahh, yes, the old bamboo…
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Like a bombilla, I think? Are you familiar with those? (i.e., the end with the holes is the end that goes into the drink to serve as a filter as you sip through the other end of the straw.) (I think it’s shown “upside down” in the photo, which is confusing/disorienting.)
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Makes sense. The article does mention filtration.
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Yeah, that part isn’t new. Ancient Mesopotamian artwork shows people drinking beer through very long straws.
Egyptian as well.
(And the Egyptians knew how to party)
What’s new is pushing the date back. The descriptions of straws from Mesopotamia, and surviving examples, have a metal tip, with holes, that would have been fitted over the end of a hollow reed.
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used to sip beer through straws
I supposed they were also eating pizza with pineapple topping? Heathens.
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Well, I mean, if you want to get technical…
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They would’ve probably had flatbread if they had beer, but they wouldn’t have had pineapple. Or tomato, for that matter. Not sure about cheese though.
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This collection is clearly an early form of internet.
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Cheese-making goes back some 7000 years, at least. It likely would have been known in the region. The Caucasus aren’t that far from modern-day Croatia.
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