In the ancient city of Lagash in Iran, archaeologists have found an ancient tavern dating back to 2700 BC.
Scientists note that this may indicate that in ancient times, in addition to rulers and enslaved people, there was also a middle class.
CNN writes about it.
Archaeologists during the research of the city, which was on the territory of Mesopotamia at that time, discovered an interesting find.
This is a tavern that was buried just 19 inches below the surface.
The dining room was divided into an open-air dining area and a room with benches, an oven, ancient food remains and even a 5,000-year-old refrigerator.
The team of archaeologists also discovered an industrial-sized oven, an ancient refrigerator that absorbed moisture to keep food cool, and dozens of conical bowls, many of which contained fish remains, suggesting that the courtyard was intended for outdoor dining.
"I think the first thing that caught the eye was this very large oven, and it's really beautiful. It's left a kind of iridescent color in the soil from the various burning episodes and ash deposits, and the interior is framed by these big bricks," he says. archaeologist from the University of Pennsylvania Reed Goodman.
Lagash, now the city of al-Khiba, was one of the oldest and largest cities in southern Mesopotamia - from the fifth millennium to the middle of the second millennium BC and covered an area of almost two square miles.
Excavations in this city resumed in 2019.
At first, scientists studied religious topics, but then they decided to search on the outskirts of the city.
The opening of the tavern confirms the opinion of the director of the Lagash archaeological project and the curator of the Middle East department of the Pennsylvania Museum, Holly Pittman, and her team that the society was not organized only by the elite and the enslaved people, as was previously believed, but included an ancient middle class.
"The fact that you have a public place where people can sit down and drink a pint and eat fish chowder means they're not working under the tyranny of kings. There's already something here that gives us a much more colorful history of the city." - adds Reid Goodman.
We will remind you that in the Amarna necropolis on the eastern bank of the Nile, archaeologists found an amazing collection of gold jewelry dating back 3.5 thousand years.
There they unearthed the burial of a young woman.
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