22-Pound Bog Butter Unearthed: 2,000-Year-Old Block Still Believed To Be Edible

Some things get better with time, but butter is not exactly one of them. But butter is butter, and it keeps for a long time. How long, nobody really knows, because there's butter that lasted 2,000 years old underground.

The butter, according to CNN, was found by Turf cutter Jack Conaway when he was cutting peat for fuel in the Emlagh bog. Burried 12 feet under, he found the massive 22-pound chunk of butter, estimated to be 2,000 years old.

2,000-year-old lump of butter found in bog– and it’s still edible https://t.co/cv7WTJHcAk pic.twitter.com/K17ULAMY9A

— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) June 15, 2016

It sounds crazy, but such encounters are not as unusual as anyone might think - hundreds of lumps of bog butter have been found in Ireland and Scotland, dating back thousands of years, a fact confirmed by The Journal of Irish Archaeology.

Conaway's discovery wasn't the biggest one, either. In 2013, another turf cutter in county Offaly found a massive 100-pound bog butter believed to be 5,000 years old. However, this did not faze him - he donated the chunk of butter to the Cavan County Museum, which said that butter was considered a luxury in medieval times, and was used to pay rent and taxes.

The museum shared, "It was sometimes used as a 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."

Fox News noted that it was not unusual for butter to be buried in peat bogs in ancient and early medieval Ireland. With the low temperature, low oxygen, and a highly acidic environment, the bogs are considered to have excellent preservative properties.

However, the Emlagh Bog is considered unusal - it wasn't buried in a wooden container or keg, which was the normal practice in ancient times. Sabina Donohoe, curator of the Museum said, "It may have been an offering to the gods."

If butter keeps for that long, does it mean that it's still edible? Andy Halpin of the Irish Museum's Antiquities Division told The Irish Times, "Theoretically the stuff is still edible, but we wouldn't say it's advisable."