Iraq dig uncovers 5,000 year old pub restaurant
Archaeologists in southern Iraq have uncovered the remains of a tavern dating back nearly 5,000 years they hope will illuminate the lives of ordinary people in the world’s first cities.
The find was made by a team from the United States and Italy in the ancient Lagash ruins, which are northeast of the modern city of Nasiriyah. It was already known that Lagash was one of the first urban centers of the Sumerian civilization in ancient Iraq.
The remains of a primitive refrigeration system, a large oven, benches for diners, and approximately 150 serving bowls were discovered by a team from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Pisa.
The bowls contained animal and fish bones as well as evidence of beer consumption, which was common among the Sumerians.
Asaad NIAZI / AFP “So we’ve got the refrigerator, we’ve got the hundreds of vessels ready to be served, benches where people would sit… and behind the refrigerator is an oven that would have been used… for cooking food,” project director Holly Pittman told AFP. Along with fish and aminal bones, archaeologists believe they found the remains of bowls used to serve meals in the ancient tavern.
She stated, “What we understand this to be is a place where people, regular people, could come to eat and that is not domestic.”
She stated, “We call it a tavern because beer is by far the most common drink, even more than water, for the Sumerians,” noting that “there was a beer recipe that was found on a cuneiform tablet” in one of the temples excavated in the region.
“Regular people”: After agricultural surpluses from the domestication of the first crops enabled the emergence of new social classes that were not directly involved in food production, the world’s first cities were built in southern Iraq.
Due to its abundance of fertility, the ancient Sumerians referred to the Lagash region as the “garden of the gods,” and it was here that a number of early dynastic Sumerian cities were built.
