The finding that the lees inside a 5000-year-old wine
jar contain DNA from an organism that can confidently
be assigned to Saccharomyces cerevisiae has
important implications for the evolution of wine,
bread, and beer yeasts, as well as for the emergence of
long-term human settlement and civilization based on
fermented grain and fruit staples as early as 8500 B.C.
(McGovern et al. 1995; McGovern 2003). These results
provide the oldest evidence of an association of
a microorganism of the S. cerevisiae species with
human activities. Although the chemical and archaeological
evidence was compatible with the interpretation
that the Scorpion I jar contained a
fermented beverage—namely, grape wine—until the
present study was carried out, it could not be established
definitively what organism was responsible for
the fermentation.