Darchaeologists have discovered one of the oldest examples of alcohol consumption. A set of jars dating from around 9,000 years ago contains traces of an early form of beer, which appears to have been used as part of a ritual honoring the dead.
Header image: Painted pottery vases (from the Qiaotou tumulus) used to serve food and drinks. (Jiajing Wang)
The discovery was made in Qiaotou, southern China, in a mound 80 m by 50 m, 3 m above the ground, surrounded by an artificial ditch 2 m wide and 15 m deep. Along with two human skeletons, archaeologists discovered dozens of ceramic vessels of varying size and shape, some of which had been painted and decorated.
Map locating Qiaotou in China. (Wang et al. / PLOS One)
One of the two human burials discovered in the Qiaotou tumulus. (Leping Jiang / Wang et al. / PLOS One)
Suspecting that the containers could have been used for drinking alcohol, the team selected 20 of these jars and analyzed the residue left inside. Specifically, they were looking for starch microfossils, fungi, and plant materials called phytolithes, which are all proof of the presence of fermented drinks. To make sure what they found wasn’t just contamination from millennia of dust, they also compared them to soil samples taken from the area.
Some of the ancient pottery found in the Qiaotou tumulus. (Wang et al. / PLOS One)
And of course, the inside of these containers shows that they once contained alcohol. The team found microbial residues like phytoliths and starch granules, as well as molds and yeasts, which correspond to the fermentation of beer. It is important to note that these residues are not found naturally in soil or other objects.
According to Jiajing Wang, co-author of the study:
Through analysis of the residue from the Qiaotou jars, our results revealed that the pottery vessels were used to hold beer, in its most general sense, a fermented beverage made from rice (Oryza sp.), a cereal called Job’s tears (Coix lacryma-jobi) and unidentified tubers. This old beer, however, would not have looked like the one we know today. On the contrary, it was probably a slightly fermented and sweet drink, the color of which was probably cloudy.
From the study: remains of microfossils related to beer. (a) Rice starch granules; (b) Starch granule of an unidentified USO; (c) Job’s tear starch granule; (d) Double-crowned phytolith of rice; (e) Yeast cells in the budding process; (f) and (g) vesicle / sporangium without phialides / spores attached; (h) black sporangia connecting to sporangiophores (scale bars: 20 μm). (Wang et al. / PLOS One)
This 9,000-year-old vintage is not the earliest known example of beer making, and that honor still goes to a 13,000-year-old brew discovered in Israel a few years ago.
13,000-year-old beer: the oldest known trace of artificial alcohol in the world
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But it is the oldest in China, and it seems to be the earliest evidence of the use of yeast as a fermentation agent, to around 1,000 years.
Still according to Wang:
We don’t know how people made mold 9,000 years ago, because fermentation can occur naturally. If people had leftover rice and the grains got moldy, they might have noticed that the grain got sweeter and more alcoholic over time. Even though people didn’t know the biochemistry associated with moldy grains, they likely observed the fermentation process and took advantage of it through trial and error.
However, it does not appear that this beer was used as an occasional drink. The domestication of rice was still in its infancy, so the drink must have been difficult to make and most likely reserved for special occasions. In this case, it appeared to be part of a ritual associated with the dead, as evidenced by the skeletons and the fact that the site was far removed from any residential structure.
The study published in PLOS ONE: Early evidence for beer drinking in a 9000-year-old platform mound in southern China and presented by the Dartmouth College via Eurekalert : Study shows evidence of beer drinking 9,000 years ago in Southern China.
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