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Jordan Valley Stone Wine Press Dates to 7200 BCE, Preceding Pyramids by Millennia

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  //food-wine.news-articles.net/content/2025/11/15 .. to-7200-bce-preceding-pyramids-by-millennia.html
  Published in Food and Wine on Saturday, November 15th 2025 at 14:00 GMT by gizmodo.com

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An Ancient Wine Press Unveiled – Older Than the Pyramids

In a discovery that rewrites the timeline of human gastronomy, a team of archaeologists has unearthed a stone wine‑press that dates back to the early sixth millennium BCE—roughly 3,000 years before the construction of the great Egyptian pyramids. The find, detailed in a Gizmodo feature linked to a press release from the University of Oxford and a peer‑reviewed paper in the Journal of Archaeological Science, reveals that the earliest evidence of deliberate grape fermentation appears far earlier than scholars had previously thought.

The Site and the Stone Press

The press was located in a limestone quarry in the Jordan Valley, a region that has long been associated with the beginnings of settled agriculture. While the quarry itself is an expected landscape for early Neolithic communities, the wine‑press—a shallow, circular stone bowl with a small perforated outlet and a small wooden pestle—was a surprise. Excavations revealed the press sitting in a shallow pit, surrounded by ash and charred residue that the researchers concluded were the result of a low‑temperature fermentation process.

Carbon‑dating of charcoal and the stone itself places the press at around 7,200 BCE (± 100 years). Dr. Emily Roberts, lead author of the Oxford study, explains that “the combination of the residue analysis and the radiocarbon dates puts this press in the early 8th millennium BCE, making it the oldest known wine‑press by a considerable margin.” The discovery pushes back the start of winemaking by about three millennia and challenges the traditional narrative that wine emerged only in the Bronze Age.

The Science Behind the Evidence

The research team employed a suite of analytical techniques to confirm the wine‑press’s identity. Residue analysis via gas chromatography‑mass spectrometry (GC‑MS) detected grape‑specific compounds such as tartaric acid, malic acid, and a particular blend of phenolics that are virtually absent in other fermented products. Raman spectroscopy further confirmed the presence of anthocyanin derivatives, pigments associated with red grape skins.

“Even after thousands of years in a quarry, the chemical fingerprints of the grape juice survived,” notes Dr. Roberts. “This indicates that early humans were intentionally processing grapes into a liquid beverage, not simply consuming fresh fruit.” The team also identified traces of yeast DNA, suggesting that fermentation was an understood and controlled process.

Contextualizing the Find

The article linked to the Gizmodo piece includes a discussion of the broader implications for our understanding of the Near Eastern Neolithic. The Jordan Valley is a fertile plain that became a cradle for agriculture around 10,000 BCE, but its people are now believed to have experimented with fermenting fruits much earlier than previously documented. In the same issue of Journal of Archaeological Science, the research group outlines how the discovery dovetails with recent findings of early cereal beer in the same region—though the wine‑press marks the first clear evidence of grape fermentation in situ.

The Gizmodo article also references a 2024 paper by the University of Cambridge’s Department of Archaeology, which used satellite imagery to identify similar stone structures in the surrounding desert. “We suspect that this wine‑press may have been part of a larger communal or ceremonial complex,” says Dr. Michael Tan, a Cambridge archaeologist not involved in the study. “The fact that it was found in a quarry suggests that the community integrated their agricultural practices with their resource extraction activities.”

Why Pyramids Aren’t the Oldest Wine

The comparison to the pyramids is striking. While the Great Pyramid of Giza was completed around 2560 BCE, this wine‑press predates that by some 3,000 years. The Gizmodo piece contextualizes this by noting that early winemaking would have required not only cultivation of grapevines but also a basic understanding of fermentation—a significant leap in technology and social organization. The existence of such technology at this early date suggests a level of cultural sophistication that rivals or even surpasses the contemporaneous societies that later built the pyramids.

Looking Forward

The discovery opens up a new chapter for research into early winemaking. The Gizmodo article cites the University of Oxford’s future plans to examine the surrounding settlement layers for artifacts that might indicate trade or ceremonial use of wine. “If we can find evidence of wine being shared in feasting contexts, it could reshape our view of social life in early agricultural societies,” says Dr. Roberts.

Furthermore, the find invites a re‑examination of the chronology of fermented beverages worldwide. While beer has been known to archaeologists in various cultures dating back to 5,000 BCE, this wine‑press pushes back the genesis of wine well into the early Neolithic, suggesting that the practice of fermentation spread across different fruits earlier and more broadly than we assumed.

In short, the stone wine‑press unearthed in the Jordan Valley is more than a curious artifact; it is a window into the earliest days of human culinary experimentation. The Gizmodo article, supplemented by the Oxford press release and the Journal of Archaeological Science paper, underscores that the art of winemaking, and perhaps the very idea of crafting complex, socially meaningful beverages, is an ancient human trait that predates even the grand monuments of Egypt.