Alcohol used as ancient nutrient booster

A “milky” alcoholic residue has been found on pieces of pottery in an ancient Mexican city confirming for the first time that its residents not only drank alcohol, but may have used it to provide essential nutrients during food shortages.

The liquor residues were found in Teotihuacan, one of the largest cities in prehistory covering around eight square miles with a population of 100,000 people, as reported by NBCNews.com.

While corn was a key crop, low rainfall made yields unpredictable and, while it is high in calories, contains only low concentrations of key nutrients such as iron, calcium and B vitamins.

Instead, scientists argue that the cities inhabitants would have sought to mke alternative sources of nutrients, one of which is likely to have been an alcoholic substance called “pulque”.

Murals within the city show agave plants, typically used to make Tequila, alongside scenes of people drinking a milky alcoholic “potion”, thought to be pulque, made from the sap of the plants.

Agave plants are able to withstand frost and drought better than corn, with pulque believed to be responsible for sustaining many of the cities residents during food shortages.

Pottery analysed by scientists, which dated back to the year 200BC, uncovered 14 fragments which contained chemical evidence for the making of pulque, which is believed to have stored in vessels sealed with pine resin.

An agave plant

Lead author Marisol Correa-Ascencio, an archaeological chemist at the University of Bristol, said the findings were “a critical first step” in determining the diet of Teotihuacan’s inhabitants.

The findings were published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In it scientists said: “This research provides the earliest direct chemical evidence for the production of alcoholic beverage pulque in Mesoamerica, based on organic residues recovered from pottery vessels from Teotihuacan”, adding: “At Teotihuacan, we have evidence that pulque was stored in distinctive amphorae vessels sealed with pine resin, as well as in other, less specialized vessels. Direct evidence of pulque production provides new insights into how the nutritional requirements of Teotihuacanos were sustained in a region in which the diet was largely based on plants and crop failures, due to drought and frost damage, which resulted in frequent shortfalls in staples.”