3,000-year-old Butter Found

By Miss Cellania in Everything Else on Aug 20, 2009 at 11:01 pm

An oak barrel of butter has been found in a bog near Gilltown, Ireland. Two workers, John Fitzharris and Martin Lane, noticed a white streak in the peat and uncovered the barrel, estimated to be 3,000 years old. Pádraig Clancy and Carol Smith of the National Museum of Ireland took charge of the barrel.

“It’s rare to find a barrel as intact as that,” Mr. Clancy explained, “especially with the lid intact, and attached. It’s a really fine example.”

He estimates that the barrel is approximately 3,000 years old, from the Iron Age.

At the moment it is being dried out by staff at the Conservation Department. Once dry it will be soaked in a wax-like solution which preserves it.

“At 35ks, it’s a pretty big one,” Ms. Smith explained. Other examples of bog butter they showed tended to be less intact and much smaller.

Link -via Unique Daily


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  1. Wes
    Aug 20th, 2009 at 11:16 pm

    Mmmm … bog butter.

  2. Kalel
    Aug 20th, 2009 at 11:25 pm

    I propose a toast to butter!

  3. abdulhamid
    Aug 21st, 2009 at 2:15 am

    If one does not read the caption, it would be quite puzzling to see these people looking so pleased to be posing in front of a giant turd.

  4. Scannen
    Aug 21st, 2009 at 2:55 am

    hmmm – yummi!

    is this one also lightly salted as my favorite butter from denmark?

  5. Lasse
    Aug 21st, 2009 at 3:20 am

    And its organic too!

  6. Lasse
    Aug 21st, 2009 at 3:21 am

    :-D i just read the last sentence in the article:

    “We’ve found no body parts in Gilltown bog,” Ms. Smith said, before adding, “but here’s hoping!”

    Archeologists!

  7. Tim Giachetti
    Aug 21st, 2009 at 4:53 am

    Nice find Miss C.

    Now pass the 3000 year old pancakes.

  8. Foreigner1
    Aug 21st, 2009 at 6:50 am

    …Now will they also try to return this lost property to the rightful owners being the still living relatives of the one who put it there in the first place like that watch was found in an old wreck and that recently was returned to relatives…?

  9. heather
    Aug 21st, 2009 at 3:09 pm

    It looks like a wet log :/ yummy

  10. Video Game Dork
    Aug 22nd, 2009 at 1:37 pm

    Wouldn’t it be rotten into a no-longer-butter substence? (dairy products tend to change over time – milk to cheese and all that).

    oh, the full article answers that “The butter has changed to white and is now adipocere, which is essentially animal fat, the same sort of substance that is found on well-preserved bodies of people or animals found in the bog.”


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