Residue on pottery from an archeological site has revealed the earliest evidence of beer brewing in China, left from a 5,000-year-old recipe, researchers said on Monday.
The artifacts show that people of the era had already mastered an “advanced beer-brewing technique” that contained elements from East and West, according to a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a peer-reviewed US journal.
Yellowish residue gleaned from pottery funnels and wide-mouthed pots show traces of ingredients that had been fermented together — broomcorn millet, barley, a chewy grain known as Job’s tears and tubers.
“The discovery of barley is a surprise,” lead author Wang Jiajing of Stanford University said, saying it is the earliest known sign of barley in archeological materials from China. “This beer recipe indicates a mix of Chinese and Western traditions — barley from the West; millet, Job’s tears and tubers from China.”
The discovery indicates that barley made its way to China about 1,000 years earlier than previously believed.
Barley “may have been used as a beer-making ingredient long before it became an agricultural staple,” the study said.
The archeological site at Mijiaya includes two pits dating to between 3,400 and 2,900 BC.
It contains artifacts that point to beer brewing, filtration and underground storage, as well as stoves that may have been used to heat and mash grains.
However, it is impossible to know exactly how the beer tasted, researchers said, because they do not know the ingredients’ exact proportion.
“My guess is that the beer might have tasted a bit sour and a bit sweet,” Wang said. “Sour comes from fermented cereal grains, sweet from tubers.”
“The introduction of Middle Eastern barley into a Chinese drink fits with the special role of fermented beverages in social interactions and as an exotic ingredient which would appeal to emerging elite individuals,” said Patrick McGovern, an expert on biomolecular archeology at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology.
McGovern, who was not involved in the study, agreed the techniques used for brewing in China were advanced, and that “ancient peoples, including those at Mijiaya, applied the same principles and techniques as brewers do today.”
They knew to use heat to break down carbohydrates, and the underground location of the brew site “is very significant,” he added.
“A cool spot is important in controlling heat, which if it gets too high can destroy the enzymes responsible for the carbohydrate to sugar conversion,” he said.
Lower temperatures would also have been important for keeping the beverage cool in storage.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.