On. Nov. 13, 2017, research by Dr. Patrick McGovern, Director of the Biomolecular Archaeology Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania, revealed that the origins of viniculture can be traced to Turkey’s Taurus Mountains, the Caucasus Mountains, and/or the Zagros Mountains of Iran around 8000 BCE.

Together with an international, multi-disciplinary team of archaeologists and scientists, he carried out chemical analyses of jars from early Neolithic sites in the Republic of Georgia in the mountainous region of the South Caucasus. This finding is 600-1000 years earlier than the previous earliest chemically confirmed wine jars from Hajji Firuz Tepe in Iran in the Museum’s Near Eastern collection.

Dr. McGovern, who has made a career of finding, analyzing, and interpreting evidence of the important role of alcohol in the history of humankind, was lead author of a new report on this discovery, published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.