Would You Drink a Lumpy Beer? People Living in China 5000 Years Ago Did!

Ancient Origins

Researchers have discovered a 5,000-year-old beer recipe by studying the residue on the inner walls of pottery vessels found in an excavated site in northeast China. It’s the earliest evidence of beer production in China so far.

 On a recent afternoon, a small group of students gathered around a large table in one of the rooms at the Stanford Archaeology Center.

 Li Liu, a professor in Chinese archaeology at Stanford University and coauthor of the study on the beer recipe published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, recently stood before students and a collection of plastic-covered glass beakers and water bottles filled with yellow, foamy liquid. “Archaeology is not just about reading books and analyzing artifacts,” says Liu.

“Trying to imitate ancient behavior and make things with the ancient method helps students really put themselves into the past and understand why people did what they did.”

So That’s Why Barley Went to China
The ancient Chinese made beer mainly with cereal grains, including millet and barley, as well as with Job’s tears, a type of grass from Asia, according to the research. Traces of yam and lily root parts also appeared in the concoction.

Liu says she was particularly surprised to find barley—which is used to make beer today—in the recipe because the earliest evidence to date of barley seeds in China dates to 4,000 years ago. This suggests why barley, which was first domesticated in western Asia, spread to China.

A blend of milled malted barley for beer brewing. (CC BY SA 3.0)

“Our results suggest the purpose of barley’s introduction in China could have been related to making alcohol rather than as a staple food,” Liu says.

The ancient Chinese beer looked more like porridge and likely tasted sweeter and fruitier than the clear, bitter beers of today. The ingredients used for fermentation were not filtered out, and straws were commonly used for drinking, Liu says.

Mashing or Spitting At the end of Liu’s class, each student tried to imitate the ancient Chinese beer using either wheat, millet, or barley seeds.

“People looked at me weird when they saw the ‘spit beer’ I was making for class.”

Some of the students’ creations. (Youtube Screenshot)

The students first covered their grain with water and let it sprout, in a process called malting. After the grain sprouted, the students crushed the seeds and put them in water again. The container with the mixture was then placed in the oven and heated to 65º degrees Celsius (149º F) for an hour, in a process called mashing. Afterward, the students sealed the container with plastic and let it stand at room temperature for about a week to ferment.

Alongside that experiment, the students tried to replicate making beer with a vegetable root called manioc. That type of beer-making, which is indigenous to many cultures in South America where the brew is referred to as “chicha,” involves chewing and spitting manioc, then boiling and fermenting the mixture.

Madeleine Ota, an undergraduate student in Liu’s course, says she knew nothing about the process of making beer before taking the class and was skeptical that her experiments would work. The mastication part of the experiment was especially foreign to her, she says.

“It was a strange process,” Ota says. “People looked at me weird when they saw the ‘spit beer’ I was making for class. I remember thinking, ‘How could this possibly turn into something alcoholic?’ But it was really rewarding to see that both experiments actually yielded results.”

Ota used red wheat for brewing her ancient Chinese beer. Despite the mold, the mixture had a pleasant fruity smell and a citrus taste, similar to a cider, Ota says. Her manioc beer, however, smelled like funky cheese, and Ota had no desire to check how it tasted.

 The results of the students’ experiments are going to be used in further research on ancient alcohol-making that Liu and Wang are working on.

 “The beer that students made and analyzed will be incorporated into our final research findings,” Wang says. “In that way, the class gives students an opportunity to not only experience what the daily work of some archaeologists looks like but also contribute to our ongoing research.”

The “beer-making toolkit” from the site Liu and Wang are studying: (A) Pit H82 illustration in top and cross-section views, (B) funnel 1, (C) pot 6 in reconstructed form, (D) pot 3 in reconstructed form, and (E) pottery stove. (Wang et al.)

What Caused a Revolution?
For decades, archeologists have yearned to understand the origin of agriculture and what actions may have sparked humans to transition from hunting and gathering to settling and farming, a period historians call the Neolithic Revolution.

Studying the evolution of alcohol and food production provides a window into understanding ancient human behavior, says Liu.

Late Neolithic Period (ca. 2500 - 2000 BC) large gray mug of the Henan Longshan Culture. (CC BY SA 2.5)

But it can be difficult to figure out precisely how the ancient people made alcohol and food from just examining artifacts because organic molecules easily break down with time. That’s why experiential archaeology is so important, Liu says.

“We are still trying to understand what kind of things were used back then,” Liu says.

Top Image: A more modern beer – without the lumps. Source: Public Domain

The article, originally titled ‘Ancient Chinese recipe makes lumpy, tasty beer’ by Stanford University was originally published on Futurity and has been republished under a Creative Commons license.

8,500-year-old Evidence of Silk Production Weaves a New History of the Luxurious Fabric

Ancient Origins

Researchers have isolated degraded silk proteins in the soil of Chinese tombs that date back about 8,500 years—the oldest evidence of manmade silk by far. They found the tiny molecular proteins at the Jiahu archaeological site, which is rich with artifacts that point to some of the first signs of civilization.

The researchers, who published their findings in the journal PLOS one, say they found rough weaving tools and bone needles in the 8,500-year-old tombs, all of which indicate the people who lived at Jiahu may have had basic weaving and sewing skills.

The three tombs from which researchers took soil to find silk proteins. ( Yuxuan Gong et al .)

“This finding may advance the study of the history of silk, and the civilization of the Neolithic Age,” wrote the authors. “The invention of silk was significant not only to ancient China; but to all of Eurasia.”

The Jiahu archaeological site was home to people from about 9000 to 7000 BC. It was named after a nearby modern village.

Silk was such a desirable product that a great trade route across Eurasia in ancient times was called the Silk Road. It comprised several routes from east in China as far west as ancient Greece and Rome. Silk, of course, was not the only product carried over the Silk Road.

This map shows the land route of the Silk Road in red and sea routes in blue. ( Public Domain )

The authors wrote that the first known clothing, dating back 70,000 years, was from animal skins. Then, about 30,000 years ago people were using flax fibers to make textiles. Scholars thought silk was made much more recently, about 5,000 years back.

Until now, that is.

The scientists, led by Yuxuan Gong of the University of Science and Technology of China, came up with a system of identifying evidence of degraded silk from about 3,000 years ago in the soil. They devised a way to distinguish modern silk fibers from archaeological silk remnants. This latest article in the December 12 issue of PLOS One reports on their newest research using mass spectrometry to identify biomolecular evidence of silk protein in the soils of three tombs that date back to the New Stone Age, 8,500 years ago.

The weaving tools and bone needles found in the tombs, indicate the silk from 8,500 years ago was sewn or woven into clothing. Legends say the area of Jiahu was where silk production first began.

13th century depiction of people weaving silk by Liang Kai. ( Public Domain )

Jiahu, which is in Henan Province, is a site rich with evidence of civilization, as the authors report:

“The site is famous for the discovery of the earliest playable musical instrument (bone flutes), the earliest mixed fermented beverage of rice, honey and fruit, the earliest domesticated rice in northern China, and possibly the earliest Chinese pictographic writing. The excavated biological remains, including pollen, phytoliths and soil micromorphology, indicate that Jiahu’s warm and humid climate not only favoured the growth of mulberry trees, which feed the silkworm, but also enabled Jiahu inhabitants to settle and develop agriculture .”

A Neolithic bone flute that was discovered in Jiahu, China. ( CC BY SA 2.0 )

There is an article on Natural History Magazine online by researchers who excavated the site of Jiahu in the 1980s about the artifacts, health, diet and music of the village’s ancient residents. The article also deals with Penn State archaeologist Patrick McGovern’s efforts to recreate ancient alcoholic beverages at Jiahu, which researchers found in abundance on pottery at the site.

Jiahu pottery. (the.black.sheep)

Dr. McGovern reasoned that many of the jars and vases at Jiahu were used to ferment and store beer or wine. He speculated they made alcoholic beverages not just for intoxication but also because alcohol kills germs. They placed beer or wine along with other gifts, including flutes made from bones, into the tombs of many of the dead.

 Jiahu villagers also grew short-grain japonica rice and hunted, fished, and gathered to supply a varied diet. Evidence shows they took “carp, crane, deer, hare, turtle, and other animals. They also collected a broad variety of wild herbs, wild vegetables such as acorns, water chestnuts, and broad beans, and possibly wild rice. And they possessed domesticated dogs and pigs.”

Bone arrowheads were found at Jiahu, but the people there were not just hunters, they were also among the earliest farmers in that part of the world. (CC BY SA 3.0)

Regarding the current find, the PLOS One abstract says: “This finding may advance the study of the history of silk, and the civilization of the Neolithic Age.” The authors intend to continue investigating evidence of early silk production at Jiahu and other sites.

Top image: People preparing silk in old China. Source: Public Domain

By Mark Miller

Mystery of Ancient Chinese Civilization's Disappearance Explained

by Tia Ghose
Live Science

An archaeological site unearthed in 1986 in China revealed giant bronze statues from a lost Chinese civilization called Sanxingdui. Here, one of the bronze masks uncovered at the site, which is roughly 3,000 years old. A new theory suggests the ancient culture moved after an earthquake rerouted the flow of the city's river. Credit: Bill Perry/Shutterstock.com

An earthquake nearly 3,000 years ago may be the culprit in the mysterious disappearance of one of China's ancient civilizations, new research suggests.
The massive temblor may have caused catastrophic landslides, damming up the Sanxingdui culture's main water source and diverting it to a new location.
That, in turn, may have spurred the ancient Chinese culture to move closer to the new river flow, study co-author Niannian Fan, a river sciences researcher at Tsinghua University in Chengdu, China, said Dec. 18 at the 47th annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. [Ancient Chinese Warriors Protect Secret Tomb]

Ancient civilization
In 1929, a peasant in Sichuan province uncovered jade and stone artifacts while repairing a sewage ditch located about 24 miles (40 kilometers) from Chengdu. But their significance wasn't understood until 1986, when archaeologists unearthed two pits of Bronze Age treasures, such as jades, about 100 elephant tusks and stunning 8-feet-high (2.4 meters) bronze sculptures that suggest an impressive technical ability that was present nowhere else in the world at the time, said Peter Keller, a geologist and president of the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, California, which is currently hosting an exhibit of some of these treasures.
The treasures, which had been broken and buried as if they were sacrificed, came from a lost civilization, now known as the Sanxingdui, a walled city on the banks of the Minjiang River.
"It's a big mystery," said Keller, who was not involved in the current study.
Archaeologists now believe that the culture willfully dismantled itself sometime between 3,000 and 2,800 years ago, Fan said.
"The current explanations for why it disappeared are war and flood, but both are not very convincing," Fan told Live Science.
But about 14 years ago, archaeologists found the remains of another ancient city called Jinsha near Chengdu. The Jinsha site, though it contained none of the impressive bronzes of Sanxingdui, did have a gold crown with a similar engraved motif of fish, arrows and birds as a golden staff found at Sanxingdui, Keller said. That has led some scholars to believe that the people from Sanxingdui may have relocated to Jinsha.
But why has remained a mystery.
Geological and historical clues
Fan and his colleagues wondered whether an earthquake may have caused landslides that dammed the river high up in the mountains and rerouted it to Jinsha. That catastrophe may have reduced Sanxingdui's water supply, spurring its inhabitants to move. [History's 10 Most Overlooked Mysteries]
The valley where Sanxingdui sits has a large floodplain, with 4.3 miles (7 kilometers) of high terraced walls that were unlikely to have been cut by the small river that now flows through it, Fan said.
And some historical records support their hypothesis. In 1099 B.C., ancient writers recorded an earthquake in the capital of the Zhou dynasty, in Shaanxi province, Fan said. Though that spot is roughly 250 miles (400 kilometers) from the historic site of Sanxingdui, the latter culture didn't have writing at the time, so it's possible the earthquake epicenter was actually close to Sanxingdui — but it just wasn't recorded there, Fan said. Geological evidence also suggests that an earthquake occurred in the general region between 3,330 and 2,200 years ago, he added.
Around the same time, geological sediments suggest massive flooding occurred, and the later-Han dynasty document "The Chronicles of the Kings of Shu" records ancient floods pouring from a mountain in a spot that suggests the flow being rerouted, Fan said.  (Around 800 years later, Jinsha residents built a wall to prevent flooding.)
A river rerouted?
Together, the findings hint that a major earthquake triggered a landslide that dammed the river, rerouting its flow and reducing water flow to Sanxingdui, Fan said.
But if so, where did the river get rerouted? The team found clues high up in the mountains in the deep and wide Yanmen Ravine, at about 12,460 feet (3,800 meters) above sea level.
The modern-day river cuts through the ravine, which was carved by glaciers about 12,000 years ago. Yet the telltale signs of that glacial erosion — bowl-shaped basins known as cirques — are mysteriously absent for a long stretch of the ravine. The team hypothesizes that an earthquake spurred an avalanche that then wiped out some of the cirques about 3,000 years ago.
At this point, the theory is still very speculative, and additional geological data is needed to buttress it, Fan said.
And while the geological story is possible, Keller said, it doesn't answer the basic question: "What would motivate people to destroy their entire culture and bury it in two pits? And why didn't the culture reemerge at Jinsha?"