Revealing a 5,000-y-old beer recipe in China
Keywords
Yangshao period, alcohol, starch analysis, phytolith analysis, archaeological, chemistry
Abstract
The pottery vessels from the Mijiaya site reveal, to our knowledge, the first direct evidence of in situ beer making in China, based on the analyses of starch, phytolith, and chemical residues. Our data reveal a surprising beer recipe in which broomcorn millet (Panicum miliaceum), barley (Hordeum vulgare), Job’s tears (Coix lacryma-jobi), and tubers were fermented together. The results indicate that people in China established advanced beer-brewing technology by using specialized tools and creating favorable fermentation conditions around 5,000 y ago. Our findings imply that early beer making may have motivated the initial translocation of barley from the Western Eurasia into the Central Plain of China before the crop became a part of agricultural subsistence in the region 3,000 y later.
Original Publication Citation
Wang, J., Liua, L., Ball, T.B., Yud, L., Lie, Y., and Xing, F. 2016. Revealing a 5,000-y-old beer recipe in China. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113(23):6444-6448.
BYU ScholarsArchive Citation
Wang, Jiajing; Liu, Li; Ball, Terry; Yu, Linjie; Li, Yuanquing; and Xing, Fulai, "Revealing a 5,000-y-old beer recipe in China" (2016). Faculty Publications. 3552.
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/facpub/3552
Document Type
Peer-Reviewed Article
Publication Date
2016-06-07
Permanent URL
http://hdl.lib.byu.edu/1877/6362
Publisher
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Language
English
College
Religious Education
Department
Ancient Scripture
Copyright Status
The author(s) retains copyright to individual PNAS articles, and the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (NAS) holds copyright to the collective work and retains an exclusive License to Publish these articles, except for open access articles submitted beginning September 2017. For such open access articles, NAS retains a nonexclusive License to Publish, and these articles are distributed under either a CC BY-NC-ND or CC BY license.