Archaeological evidence released on Tuesday in Beijing by Chinese and US researchers showed that people in ancient China may had started enjoying the delights of beer as far back as 5,000 years ago.
This was contained in a statement signed by Jiajing Wang and Li Liu, both of Stanford University, Terry Ball, Brigham Young University and Fulai Xing of Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology.
They said the findings reported in the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences said the earliest written record of beer in China appeared in oracle bone inscriptions from the late Shang dynasty about 3,000 years ago.
The archaeologists explained that the inscriptions showed that the ancient Chinese used malted grains such as millets, barley and wheat as the main brewing ingredients.
The statement said: “Some studies, however, hypothesised that the Shang tradition of beer brewing has its origin in the Neolithic Yangshao period dating 5,000 to 7,000 years ago when large-scale agricultural villages were established in the Yellow River valley.”
Liu said in the new study, researchers excavated two subterranean pits dated to around 3,400 to 2,900 B.C. at Mijiaya, an archaeological site near a tributary of the Wei River in northern China.
He said the three types of vessels were recovered in pits, wide-mouth pots, funnels and jiandiping amphorae, all of which had yellowish residues on their interior surface.
Liu said the shapes and styles of the vessels suggested they were used in three distinctive stages in the beer-making process.
“It includes; brewing, filtration, and storage, interestingly, each pit also contained a pottery stove which could serve as a heating equipment to provide heat for mashing grains in brewing activity,” he said.
Wang, who led the study, said the morphological analysis of starch grains and phytoliths found inside the artefacts revealed broomcorn millets, barley, Job’s tears and tubers.
He said some starch grains bore damage patterns that precisely matched the morphological changes developed during malting and mashing observed in their own brewing experiments.
Wang said they also found the presence of oxalate, a byproduct of beer brewing, in some of the artefacts, further supporting their use as brewing vessels.
He said: “To our knowledge, our data provide the earliest direct evidence of in situ beer production in China, showing that an advanced beer brewing technique was established around 5,000 years ago.”
Ball said in addition, the identification of barley residues in the Mijiaya artefacts represented the earliest known occurrence of barley in China, pushing back the crop’s advent in the country by about 1,000 years.
He said barley was first domesticated in Western Eurasia and later introduced into China, presumably through the Central Asian steppe, but the timing and nature of the crop’s initial adoption in China was still not well understood.
Ball said the new study suggested that the crop may have been used as a beer-making ingredient long before it became an agricultural staple.
The production and consumption of Yangshao beer may have contributed to the emergence of hierarchical societies in the Central Plain, the region known as the cradle of Chinese civilisation.
Xinhua/NAN.