Nine thousand years ago, during the Neolithic period, the Chinese were making wine from rice, honey, and fruit. Wine made with grapes is thought to have originated 7,000 years ago, in the Caucasus Mountains–what is now modern-day Georgia and parts of Iran–where grapes were among the first fruits to be domesticated.
As a recent article in National Geographic points out, while alcohol is typically thought to be a by-product of civilization, evidence that it has been around since prehistoric times suggests it’s much more central to our culture. In a photo series that accompanied the piece, New York-based photographer Brian Finke traveled to the places where alcohol was born thousands of years ago–capturing them through a contemporary lens.
Doing so brought Finke and his assistant to Arles in France, where a Roman reenactment was taking place and archaeologists had recreated Roman wines using first-century AD recipes. In photos that most strikingly show the correlation between historic times and present day, locals dressed as Roman slaves and soldiers pick grapes in homage to the Roman conquers who first brought wine to France.
Finke’s style of photography is decidedly contemporary–he describes it as using lighting and composition to “play with the feeling of whether something is real or created.” In Peru, where since the Inca people have since the 16th century imbibed to feel closer to the spiritual world, using his usual style of photography was especially challenging. “In Peru, it’s been heavily photographed by traditional photojournalism, but I wanted the photos to feel contemporary,” he says. As a result, Finke’s photo essay comes off as fresh–even considering the prehistoric subject matter.