Antique pottery vessels found in Israel

Handout photo released by Israel's Antiquities Authority on Dec. 16, 2014, shows a fragment of sampled pottery vessel dated to approximately 5,800 BCE. Remains of 8,000-year-old olive oil unearthed in northern Israel may be the oldest known use of olive oil in the Mediterranean, researchers with the Israel Antiquities Authority said Wednesday. The researchers found dozens of pottery vessels dated to the Early Chalcolithic period, or the sixth millennium BCE, during salvage excavation conducted between 2011 and 2013 at En Zippori in the Lower Galilee, prior to the widening of a highway. Trying to discover what was stored in the jars and how they were used by the site's ancient inhabitants, the researchers methodically sampled dozens of vessels. The tests revealed that the pottery contained olive oil, the researchers said. A comparison of the old olive oil remains and one-year-old oil showed a strong resemblance between the two, indicating a particularly high level of preservation of the ancient material, which had survived close to its original composition for almost 8,000 years, according to the researchers. (Xinhua/JINI/Handout/IAA)