New evidence reveals ancient Chinese brewed beer 5,000 years ago

People in ancient China may have started enjoying the delights of beer as far back as 5,000 years ago, showed archaeological evidence released Monday by Chinese and U.S. researchers.

So far, the earliest written record of beer in China appears in oracle bone inscriptions from the late Shang dynasty about 3,000 years ago, which showed ancient Chinese used malted grains such as millets, barley and wheat as the main brewing ingredients.

Some studies, however, hypothesized 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.

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.

Three types of vessels were recovered in both pits: wide-mouth pots, funnels, and jiandiping amphorae, all of which have yellowish residues on their interior surface.

The shapes and styles of the vessels suggested they were used in three distinctive stages in the beer-making process: brewing, filtration, and storage, the researchers reported in the U.S. journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Interestingly, each pit also contained a pottery stove, which could serve as a heating equipment to provide heat for mashing grains in brewing activity.

Morphological analysis of starch grains and phytoliths found inside the artifacts revealed broomcorn millets, barley, Job's tears, and tubers, said Jiajing Wang of the Stanford University, who led the study.

Some starch grains bore damage patterns that precisely match 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 artifacts, further supporting their use as brewing vessels.

"To our knowledge, our data provide the earliest direct evidence of in situ beer production in China, showing that an advanced beerbrewing technique was established around 5,000 years ago," Wang and colleagues wrote in their paper.

The study also included Li Liu of the Stanford University, Terry Ball of the Brigham Young University and Fulai Xing of the Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology.

In addition, the identification of barley residues in the Mijiaya artifacts represents the earliest known occurrence of barley in China, pushing back the crop's advent in the country by about 1,000 years, they 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 is still not well understood.

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 civilization,'" the paper said. Endit