SCIENCE LAB SCORES : ANCIENT GRAPES

LOOKING for an early vintage? How does 650 B.C. sound to you ?

Humans have been drinking wine for thousands of years. Paintings from ancient Egypt show the harvesting of grapes and the making of wine.

Mesopotamian murals illustrate elites raising a glass of what some scholars think is wine.

But how much has wine changed over the milleniums? And what role did humans play in the evolution of grapes and their varieties?

Scholars are answering those questions using ancient DNA preserved in grape seeds found in archaeological sites.

A new study presents an in-depth genetic analysis of ancient seeds, called pips, found in France, one of the world's cultural and geographic centers of the winemaking tradition.

Humans in France were domesticating grapes for making wine by 650 B.C. around the time when Greek settlers founded the port city of Marseilles, according to the study, published in the journal Nature Communications.

And the true date could be even earlier, the authors said.

This publishing continues to part [ 2 ].