A funerary feast fit for King Midas

Abstract

A royal banquet has been reconstructed from residues in pots found inside the tomb.

Full text

© 1999 Macmillan Magazines Ltd
We have chemically analysed the
ancient organic contents of vessels
from the Tumulus MM, ‘Midas
Mound’1, the site at Gordion in central
Turkey that is the likely tomb of King
Midas. The analysis revealed that a spicy
meal of sheep or goat and pulses was eaten
by mourners at a feast before the interment.
We also identified a mixed fermented bev-
erage of grape wine, barley beer and honey
mead in the most comprehensive Iron Age
drinking set ever found, comprising
numerous bronze mixing and serving ves-
sels and more than 100 bowls. Besides pro-
viding direct and dramatic evidence for
ancient Mediterranean cuisine and cus-
toms, our findings have an important
bearing on the cultural antecedents of
Midas’s Phrygian kingdom and on the
wider application of molecular archaeologi-
cal techniques to other ancient foods and
beverages.
Preservation conditions were extraordi-
narily good inside the tomb, which is the
earliest known intact wooden structure in
the world, dated at about 700 BC. The body
of a male, aged 60–65, was laid out in state
on a thick pile of dyed textiles in a unique
log coffin2. The identification of the body as
King Midas is strongly supported by the
monumental size of the earthen mound
built over the tomb, the richness of the
burial goods, and the contemporaneous
Assyrian inscriptions. The coffin and 14
pieces of fine wooden furniture3had been
placed in the tomb after being used in the
ceremonies.
Our chemical reconstruction (Fig. 1) of
the banquet entrée is based on well pre-
served ‘fingerprint’ compounds. Triacyl-
glycerols, composed principally of saturated
palmitic (C16) and stearic (C18) fatty acids,
with small amounts of unsaturated oleic
(C18:1) fatty acids, predominate in the
residues. These compounds, together with
cholesterol and the C6, C8, C10 saturated
acids (caproic, caprylic and capric acids,
respectively) can best be explained as deriv-
ing from sheep or goat fat. A rancid odour,
which may have come from this fat, was
detected by the excavators when the tomb
was opened. Other compounds indicate
that the meat was first barbecued before
being cut off the bone and seasoned with
Mediterranean herbs and spices.
The major constituents of the mixed fer-
mented beverage are tartaric acid and its
salts (occurring naturally in large amounts
only in grape and its products, including
wine4), calcium oxalate (‘beerstone’, the
main precipitate of barley beer5) and
brief communications
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A funerary feast fit for King Midas
A royal banquet has been reconstructed from residues in pots found inside the tomb.
4,000 3,500 3,000 2,500 2,000 1,500 1,000 500
Frequency (cm–1)
Relative absorbanceRelative intensity
0246810121416
1,000900800700600500400300200
552
608
606
864
836 862
890
808 892
m/z
Time (min)
Relative abundance
580
Ram-headed Situla
Pottery Jar
a
b
cd
Figure 1 Analysis of vessel contents in the ‘King Midas’ tomb. a, Bronze ram-headed
situla.
b, Complementary analyses of the contents
of the
situla
(purple line) and food remains from inside a pottery jar (red line). Diffuse-reflectance Fourier-transform infrared spectra typify
the methanol extracts of 16 beverage and 14 food samples. The
situla
’s residue is characterized by strong hydrocarbon bands at
2,930/2,860, 1,460, 1,360 and 720 cm11, best explained by long-chain esters of beeswax. Carboxylate adsorptions between 1,670
and 1,610 cm11and between 1,610 and 1,570 cm11correlate with calcium oxalate (‘beerstone’) and calcium tartrate, respectively. A
broad band at 3,450–3,400 cm11is due to hydroxyl groups. The food residue, by contrast, lacks carboxylate and hydroxyl absorption,
and has a marked carbonyl doublet at 1,750–1,730 cm11. Its hydrocarbon bands have better definition in the ‘fingerprint’ region at
1,420, 1,390, 1,170, and 1,120 cm11. These data would best be accounted for by lamb fat. c, High-performance liquid chromatogram
(HPLC) of a chloroform-methanol extract of the food residue shows that triacylglycerols account for the peak at a retention time of 2.55
min (total ions) representing 90% of the lipid fraction and about 10% of the ancient food residue. d, Its mass spectrum is dominated by
protonated palmitodistearin (
m
/
z
864), with lesser amounts of dipalmito-stearin (836) and tripalmitin (808). Small peaks at 862, 892 and
890, respectively, are due to to oleo-palmito-stearin, tristearin and 2-oleodistearin, the latter being prevalent in pulses. The diacyl-
glycerides at 608, 606, 580 and 552 are fragmentation products. Other components of the food samples were identified by gas chro-
matography–mass spectrometry, sometimes preceded by direct thermal extraction. These include: anisic acid (from anise or fennel),
chondrillasterol (lentil), elaidic acid, the
trans
isomer of oleic acid (olive oil), a range of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, including
phenanthrene, and alkyl phenol derivatives such as cresol (barbecued meat), and a-terpineol and terpenoid compounds (spices).

© 1999 Macmillan Magazines Ltd
Game theory
Losing strategies can win
by Parrondo’s paradox
In a game of chess, pieces can sometimes be
sacrificed in order to win the overall game.
Similarly, engineers know that two unstable
systems, if combined in the right way, can
paradoxically become stable. But can two
losing gambling games be set up such that,
when they are played one after the other,
they becoming winning? The answer is yes.
This is a striking new result in game theory
called Parrondo’s paradox, after its discov-
erer, Juan Parrondo1,2. Here we model this
behaviour as a flashing ratchet3, in which
winning results if play alternates randomly
between two games.
There are actually many ways to con-
struct such gambling scenarios, the sim-
plest of which uses three biased coins (Fig.
1a). Game A consists of tossing a biased
coin (coin 1) that has a probability (p1) of
winning of less than half, so it is a losing
game. Let p141/21
e
, where
e
, the bias,
can be any small number, say 0.005.
Game B (Fig. 1a) consists of playing
with two biased coins. The rule is that we
play coin 2 if our capital is a multiple of an
integer Mand play coin 3 if it is not. The
value of Mis not important, but for sim-
plicity let us say that M43. This means
that, on average, coin 3 would be played a
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little more often than coin 2. If we assign a
poor probability of winning to coin 2, such
as p241/101
e
, then this would outweigh
the better coin 3 with p343/41
e
, making
game B a losing game overall.
Thus both A and B are losing games, as
can be seen in Fig. 1b, where the two lower
lines indicate declining capital. If we play
two games of A followed by two of B and so
on, this periodic switching results in the
upper line in Fig. 1b, showing a rapid
increase in capital — this is Parrondo’s para-
dox. What is even more remarkable is that
when games A and B are played randomly,
with no order in the sequence, this still pro-
duces a winning expectation (Fig. 1b).
This phenomenon was recently proved
mathematically1for a generalized Mand
analysed in terms of entropy based on
Shannon’s information theory3. We used
the flashing brownian ratchet4to explain
the game by analogy. The flashing ratchet
can be visualized as an uphill slope that
switches back and forth between a linear
and a sawtooth-shaped profile. Brownian
particles on a flat or sawtooth slope always
drift downwards, as expected. However, if
we flash between the flat and saw-tooth
slope, the particles are ‘massaged’ uphill.
This is only possible if the sawtooth shape is
asymmetrical in a way that favours particles
spilling over a higher tooth.
The flat slope is like game A, where the
bias
e
is like the steepness of the slope. Game
B is like the sawtooth slope, where the differ-
ence between coin 2 and coin 3 is like the
asymmetry in the tooth shape. In the
brownian ratchet case, there are two types of
slope, with falling particles, but when they
are switched the particles go uphill. Simi-
larly, two of Parrondo’s games have declin-
ing capital that increases if the games are
switched or alternated. The games can be
thought of as being a discrete ratchet and are
known collectively as a parrondian ratchet.
Game theory is linked to various disci-
plines such as economics and social dynam-
ics, so the development of parrondian-like
strategies may be useful, for example for
modelling cases in which declining birth and
death processes combine in a beneficial way.
Gregory P. Harmer, Derek Abbott
Centre for Biomedical Engineering,
Department of Electronic and Electrical
Engineering, University of Adelaide,
Adelaide, SA 5005, Australia
e-mail: dabbott@eleceng.adelaide.edu.au
1. Harmer, G. P., Abbott, D., Taylor, P. G. & Parrondo, J. M. R. in
Proc. 2nd Int. Conf. Unsolved Problems of Noise and Fluctuations
11–15 July, Adelaide (eds Abbott, D. & Kiss, L. B.)(American
Institute of Physics, in the press).
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Parrondo, J. M. R. in Proc. Stochastic and Chaotic Dynamics
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beeswax (a group of marker compounds6
that are not easily filtered out from mead).
The Homeric epics7,8, reflecting both
Greek and Anatolian traditions of the
eighth century BC and earlier, describe out-
door funeral banquets in which skewered
and roast sheep and goat were served,
together with a mixed fermented beverage
(Greek kykeon)9similar to that in the Midas
tomb. (Barley grains were added to kykeon,
which may have been in the form of beer.)
This beverage, in which other fruits such as
apple and cranberry might have been used
instead of grapes, had long been a tradition-
al drink in Europe10, suggesting that the
Phrygian population could have been of
European extraction, perhaps from the
Balkans or northern Greece.
Patrick E. McGovern*, Donald L. Glusker*,
Robert A. Moreau†, Alberto Nuñez†,
Curt W. Beck‡, Elizabeth Simpson§,
Eric D. Butrym¶, Lawrence J. Exner*,
Edith C. Stout‡
*Museum Applied Science Center for Archaeology,
University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology
and Anthropology, Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania 19104, USA
e-mail: mcgovern@sas.upenn.edu
brief communications
A
p11-p1
win lose
Coin 1
B
Capital is
divisible by MCapital is not
divisible by M
p21-p2
win lose
p31-p3
win lose
Coin 2 Coin 3
0 20 40 60 80 100
–1.5
–1.0
–0.5
0
0.5
1.0
1.5
Games played
Capital
Periodic
Random
Game A
Game B
a
b
Figure 1 Game rules and simulation. a, An example of two
games, consisting of only three biased coins, which demonstrate
Parrondo’s paradox, where
p
1,
p
2and
p
3are the probabilities of
winning for the individual coins. For game A, if
e
40.005 and
p
141/21
e
, then it is a losing game. For game B, if
p
241/101
e
,
p
343/41
e
and
M
43 then we end up with coin
3 more often than coin 2. But coin 3 has a poor probability of win-
ning, so B is a losing game. The paradox is that playing games A
and B in any sequence leads to a win. b, The progress of playing
games A and B individually and when switching between them.
The simulation was performed by playing game A twice and game
B twice, and so on, until 100 games were played; this is indicated
by the line labelled ‘Periodic’. Randomly switched games result in
the line labelled ‘Random’. The results were averaged from
50,000 trials with
e
40.005.
†Eastern Regional Research Center,
US Department of Agriculture,
600 East Mermaid Lane, Wyndmoor,
Pennsylvania 19038, USA
‡Amber Research Laboratory,
Department of Chemistry, Vassar College,
Poughkeepsie, New York 12601, USA
§The Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the
Decorative Arts, 18 West 86th Street, New York,
New York 10024, USA
¶Scientific Instrument Services,
1027 Old York Road, Ringoes,
New Jersey 08551, USA
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