World’s oldest melon unearthed

This delectable specimen to your left is all that remains of a 2,100 year old melon found buried in Moriyama, a town outside of Tokyo. I’ll be the first to admit that this is a dry news story (“Archaeologists have excavated in Shiga Prefecture what they believe are the oldest remains of a melon ever found”) but people, think about it: this melon precedes Jesus even. And there’s still some flesh left!!

Radio carbon dating suggests the remains of this melon are 2,100 years old, the oldest around. This blows the previous contender, a whippersnapper of a Chinese melon that dates back to 1,600 ad, right out of the water.

Then again, that’s nothing compared to four millenia old noodle remains. Or the 17 million year old hoard of nuts some prehistoric hamster lost track of. 

For an exhaustive, random, and delightful look at other ancient food stuffs go check out the The FOOD Museum Online whose companion site The Potato Museum (the world’s largest collection and first museum on the subject) is pretty cool too. There you’ll find the potato-dedicated blog Potatoheads Talking that covers a myriad of spud topics including a WWII hand grenade that was almost mistaken for a potato by a farmer in Italy.