It was the red Solo cup of Ancient Greece.
A 3,500-year-old clay cup from the Greek island of Crete that was designed to be thrown away after use is set to go on display at the British Museum in London later this week, according to a new report.
The vessel, used by the Minoan civilization, will be unveiled Thursday as part of an exhibition on wasteful items at the museum, USA Today reported.
“People may be very surprised to know that disposable, single-use cups are not the invention of our modern consumerist society, but in fact, can be traced back thousands of years,” British Museum curator Julia Farley told the outlet.
Thousands of similar cups have been uncovered discarded together on the island, where they were produced en mass for wine-drinking around 1700-1600 BC, the outlet said.
That indicates they were for a “one-time use” when “serving wine at feasts,” according to the museum.
“The elite were showing off their wealth and status by throwing these great big parties, feasts and festivals,” Farley said.
The ancient cups will be displayed alongside other disposable items such as a waxed paper coffee cup used on airplanes in the 1990s to highlight the extent of waste on the planet.
“People have always made and then disposed of objects,” museum director Hartwig Fischer said in a statement.
“But becoming rubbish is not necessarily the end of an object’s life; some items get recycled, some repurposed, and in a few very rare cases, some are reborn as windows to the past after being rediscovered hundreds of years after being thrown away.”