Beeswax and honey exploitation (early beekeeping)
Explotación de la abeja: miel y cera (protoapicultura)
- Date
- c. 7000 BCE · confidence medium
- Place
- Çatalhöyük, Konya, Turkey
- Credited to
- Neolithic farmers of Anatolia
- Field
- Life & health
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
Beeswax residues in pottery from Çatalhöyük and across Neolithic Europe demonstrating the systematic exploitation of hives, probably in logs or baskets. Honey was the only concentrated sweetener, and wax a technical material.
Whether there were domestic hives or only organised gathering is debated; beekeeping with hives is only documented in Egypt.
What it led to
- Mead and the sweetening of fermented drinks
- Wax for waterproofing, modelling and, later, lost-wax casting
- Artificial hives and full beekeeping in Egypt (c. 2400 BCE)
Built on
- Wild honey gathering (Cave of the Spider rock art)
- Pottery
Made possible
- Lost-wax castingc. 3700 BCE
- Old Kingdom beekeeping with hives (Niuserre's sun temple)c. 2400 BCE
- Anton Janša's rational beekeeping1771
- Lost-wax casting
- Mead
- Egyptian beekeeping