Honey Honey Honey, Ain't It Funny ....

Found: A 7,500-Year-Old Cave Painting of Humans Gathering Honey

Back then, it was more like hunting.


A honey hunting scene at abrigo de Barranco Gómez in Castellote, Teruel, Spain. Bea, Domingo, and Angás/ CC BY 4.0

Within the foothills of the Iberian System Mountain Range in northeastern Spain, archaeologists have discovered a 7,500-year-old cave painting depicting prehistoric humans gathering honey. The exceptionally detailed image shows a figure climbing a rope ladder to reach a colony of bees. It is considered the best preserved image of its kind and, alongside other rock art found at the site, known as Barranco Gómez, provides a picture of humans transitioning from a hunter-gatherer to an agricultural and shepherding economy.

Manuel Bea, a researcher from the University of Zaragoza, authenticated the painting alongside colleagues Inés Domingo and Jorge Angás. “We have a perfect photograph,” he explains, that provides insight into just how these practices were conducted: by climbing ropes. The Barranco Gómez rock shelter was found by a nearby resident in 2013, but the analysis of the painting published just this year.

“Honey gathering or honey hunting was important for different aspects,” Bea explains. “Honey is one of the most nutritious foods found in nature and it is also sweet, which is rare. But the images also have a symbolic significance attending to the risks taken [by the climbers] in order to get it.”

Honey gathering scenes have been found before in the region, most famously “The Man of Bicorp” in the Cuevas de la Araña, or Spider Caves, which at 8,000 years old is the oldest known surviving depiction.

“The honey hunter is suspended over the side of the cliff and is robbing a wild nest of bees,” said Gene Kritsky, Dean of Behavioral & Natural Sciences at Mount St. Joseph University, on the podcast Gastropod. In “Man of Bicorp,” we see the renderings of a person navigating a rickety rope-ladder, bag in hand amidst a cloud of wild bees. The hunter is fixated on one thing: the honeycombs dangling from above.

“They certainly appreciated the value of honey,” Kristsky tells me. “They went to great lengths to get it.”

No one knows when honey gathering first began. It is believed to predate 2450 BC, when beekeeping first appears in Egyptian hieroglyph renderings. The Egyptians, Kristky explains, believed that bees were a sacred gift. As a result, honey was a divine and sought after treat.

Alongside the honey painting, two others were discovered at the Barranco Gómez site, including a scene depicting a pair of archers and an image of a hind, a female red deer, on the run. The paintings, Bea explains. are reminders of the ingenuity of human evolution.

“Rock art is the best way to see that prehistoric people were like us—or we, like them,” says Bea. In other words, humans have loved honey and gone to length to discover and gather foods of value for millennia.

The research took place as part of the European project “Breaking barriers between science and heritage approaches to Levantine rock art through archaeology, heritage science and IT” (LArcHER). The discovery was featured in the journal Trabajos de Prehistoria.

The authors note that discoveries like this “stress the need for reviewing new and old territories” and to get a better understanding of our food systems. One thing’s for certain though: Regardless of time, consequence, or heights, our collective yearnings for sweet things is timeless.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/honey-cave-painting

Honey played an extraordinary role in ancient society, and in the following article, we will explore the part of Honey in the ancient world. When speaking of Honey, perhaps the best place to start exploring the history of this magic liquid is Ancient Egypt.

The ancient Egyptians were among the first civilizations to develop beekeeping practices.

The earliest evidence of honey harvesting dates back to around 3000 BC. And it is thought that the Egyptians were responsible for introducing Beekeeping to other parts of the world.

The ancient Egyptians first started Beekeeping by capturing wild hives. They would then put the hives in a sunny spot near their homes or farms.  

The farmers would also use hollow logs, baskets, and pottery to house the bees. The hives were made out of clay and mud pipes stacked over each other. Special moving rafts were built to move the hives to a new location near flowers, or in other words, Egyptians were practising the so-called mobile Beekeeping.

The ancient Egyptians also had a special way of harvesting honey. They would cut off the top of the hive and then collect the honeycombs. They would then put the combs back in the hive to continue to make Honey. In these days, Beekeeping was an important activity organised and controlled by the state.

Association with Religion

Bees were considered sacred animals by Ancient Egyptians. They believed that the “honey bee” was a gift from god Re. Therefore, they would often depict an image of honey bees in hieroglyphics and paintings. Raw Honey was also often used in religious ceremonies and offered as a sacrifice to gods. Honey was often included as part of their tombs or pyramids to ensure that they would have food in the afterlife. For instance, an excavation in 1922 discovered more than 2000 jars of preserved Honey from the tomb of King Tut. The archaeologists tasted it, and to their amazement, found it to be sweet and edible – 3000-year-old Honey still edible. Moreover, Egyptians fed sacred animals such as a sacred lion at Leontopolis with honey cakes.

Uses of Raw Honey in Ancient Egypt

In Ancient Egypt, Honey was a valuable currency, easy to store and transport. Honey was convertible for all trades and used to measure its worth relative to other objects and commodities. In addition, raw Honey was used to pay taxes and as a kind of tribute from the various provinces to the pharaoh.

Honey was considered a prestigious food at this time in Ancient Egypt at which only the higher classes could enjoy. Honey was given to pharaohs, and people who worked with them were granted a spoon of raw Honey a day for general wellbeing and to increase longevity. Furthermore, Egyptians did not grow any sugar or corn at this time. Therefore honey was the only sweetener.

Ancient Egyptians used raw Honey in medicine as well. In fact, Honey was mentioned five hundred times among nine hundred Egyptian remedies. Honey was a standard prescription for cuts, infections, wounds and burns. They also used Honey to treat coughs, asthma problems, throat infections, sore throats, and stomach ulcers. They believed raw Honey had many healing properties and was easily digestible when combined with other ingredients.

Ancient Egyptians used Honey so many ways, and it is amazing how versatile this natural product really was.

https://realrawhoney.co.uk/blogs-real-raw-honey-honey-in-ancient-egypt/