A massive chunk of butter, believed to be around 2,000 years old has been unearthed in Ireland.
Landscaper Jack Conway was working in Emlagh bog in Meath last week when he unearthed the 22-lb hunk of dairy, the Irish Times reported.
According to Cavan County Museum the stuff Conway found, known as Bog Butter, is centuries old.
Speaking with the Irish Times, Andy Halpin of Ireland’s National Museum the butter was found an area where three ancient county subdivisions met.
“These bogs in those times were inaccessible, mysterious places,” Halpin told the newspaper. “It is at the juncture of three separate kingdoms, and politically it was like a no-man’s-land – that is where it all hangs together.”
The butter was found about 12 feet below the ground, Halpin said.
According to the Smithsonian, Bog Butter “is exactly what it sounds like—butter made from cow’s milk, buried in a bog.”
“What makes it special is its age. After spending so much time in the cool, damp peat, it starts to take on the appearance and consistency of paraffin wax,” writes Jason Daley of Smithsonian.com
As Cavan County Museum points out, butter was often used as currency in early medieval Ireland and “sometimes used as an offering to the spirits and gods to keep people and their property safe.”
“When used as offerings it would have been buried and never dug up again,” according to the museum.
As for the stuff found in Emlagh bog?
“Theoretically the stuff is still edible – but we wouldn’t say it’s advisable,” Halpin told the Irish Times.
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