Posted on 12/06/2004 5:20:45 PM PST by blam
China was drinking wine 9,000 years ago
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
(Filed: 07/12/2004)
A mixed fermented wine of rice, honey and fruit was being drunk in northern China 9,000 years ago, more than a thousand years before the previously oldest known fermented drinks, brewed in the Middle East.
In the past scientists relied on the stylistic similarities of early pottery and bronze vessels to argue for the existence of a prehistoric fermented beverage in China.
Today's findings provide the first direct chemical evidence from ancient China for such beverages, which were of cultural, religious, and medical significance.
Dr Patrick McGovern, of the Applied Science Centre for Archaeology, University of Pennsylvania Museum, and colleagues in America and China focused on finds in the Neolithic village of Jiahu, in Henan Province.
The team found and analysed chemical traces left by the fermented drinks on pottery shards.
Through a variety of chemical methods, certain compounds were identified, including those for hawthorn fruit, wild grape, beeswax associated with honey and rice.
Dr McGovern, an archaeochemist, said: "As far as what the early Neolithic might have tasted like, I think that the fruit, whether grape and/or hawthorn fruit would have predominated."
Liquids more than 3,000 years old, remarkably preserved inside bronze vessels, were also analysed. The vessels were hermetically sealed when their lids corroded.
These vessels, from the capital city of Anyang and an elite burial in the Changzikou Tomb in Yellow River Basin, were found to contain rice and millet "wines".
The beverages were flavoured with herbs, flowers and tree resins, and are similar to herbal wines described in Shang dynasty oracle inscriptions, the team reports in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
GGG Ping.
China also invented noodles before the Italians.
Here's to th' Chines--*HIC*
Here's to th' Chine--*HIC*
Here's to th'--*HIC*
Ah hell...here's to South Koreans.
They must be middling blotto by now...
Great. Maybe they can give the Sonoma valley a run for their money.....exclusively distributed at WalMart.....
Wine & noodles... sounds like dinner!
They must be middling blotto by now...
Was it made by prisoners?
I hear that the wine was assertive, but not overbearing, with notes of rutabaga and jicama at mid-palate and finishing with a strong overtone of gumout.
Sounds good to me!
7000BC - a good year.
Chinese wine sucks. Way too sweet and not enough alcohol.
But ice cream was invented by Italy.
At least we know the deceased died happy.
Series, if they have been drinking wine that long you'd think they would be mellowed out by now.
1,000,000,000 bottles of wine on the wall 1,000,000,000 bottles of wine, if one of those Chinese ancestors of Mulan drink a bottle of wine 999,999,999 on the wall!
Ah, a connoisseur.....
ping
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