Archaeologists open 'world's oldest' bottle of wine – and make shocking discovery

Archaeologists who discovered the world's oldest bottle of wine in a Roman tomb in Spain made a shocking discovery when they opened it up. The 2,000-year-old glass urn was originally unearthed five years ago in Carmona, a city in Andalusia, 25 miles from Seville.

In 2024, researchers announced they had found liquid inside the urn, which tests showed was wine. This was dated to the fourth century, making it one of the oldest vintages ever to be discovered. “At first we were very surprised that liquid was preserved in one of the urns,” Carmona’s municipal archaeologist, Juan Manuel Román, said at the time. However, the surprises did not stop there.

Archaeologists were amazed to find a man's cremated bones in the wine, along with a gold ring. The discovery has helped shed more light on funerary rituals in the Spanish region during the Roman period.

Researchers said that it was "no coincidence" that the skeletal remains were those of a man and not a woman. They explained that the ancient Romans prohibited women from drinking wine, which was considered to be a "man's drink". The urn’s ash content reflected Roman society’s gender divisions in funerary rituals.

The remains of a woman were found in another urn from the tomb, which had no traces of wine at all. The urn was found to contain three amber jewels, a bottle of perfume with a patchouli scent and the remains of silk fabrics.

The artefacts placed in the tomb were done so according to a Roman belief that the dead would need them on their voyage to the afterlife.

It is generally believed that there were five stages to a Roman funeral, although there are no direct descriptions of the ritual. The five parts consisted of a procession (or Pompa), cremation and burial, eulogy, feast at the graveside and then commemoration.

The Romans believed it was very important to conduct proper ceremonies and burial rites to avoid a malicious spirit rising from the underworld.