Fermented beverages of pre- and proto-historic China.
By P. McGovern, Juzhong Zhang, Jigen Tang, Zhiqing Zhang, Gretchen R. Hall, R. Moreau, A. Núñez, E. Butrym, M. Richards, Chen-shan Wang and 3 more. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2004
927 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Chemical analyses of ancient organics absorbed into pottery jars from the early Neolithic village of Jiahu in Henan province in China have revealed that a mixed fermented beverage of rice, honey, and fruit (hawthorn fruit and/or grape) was being produced as early as the seventh millennium before Christ (B.C.). This prehistoric drink paved the way for unique cereal beverages of the proto-historic second millennium B.C., remarkably preserved as liquids inside sealed bronze vessels of the Shang and Western Zhou Dynasties. These findings provide direct evidence for fermented beverages in ancient Chinese culture, which were of considerable social, religious, and medical significance, and help elucidate their earliest descriptions in the Shang Dynasty oracle inscriptions.
Subfields: Food Science, Plant Science, Sociology and Political Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/df3d2f2c490ec5279b171189087ba7902fdd6603
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Citations in the corpus
- Evidence for early viticulture in China: proof of a grapevine (Vitis vinifera L., Vitaceae) in the Yanghai Tombs, Xinjiang (2009, background): “(McGovern et al., 2004), as seeds of Vitis were unearthed together with seeds of Chinese hawthorn (Crataegus pinnatifida Bge.”
- The Ehrlich Pathway for Fusel Alcohol Production: a Century of Research on Saccharomyces cerevisiae Metabolism (2008, background): “millennia in the production of alcoholic beverages (41).”
- Wines from fruits other than grapes: Current status and future prospectus (2015, background): “Wine is a distinctive product that influences major life events, from birth to death, victories, auspicious occasions, harvest and other events, due to its analgesic, disinfectant, and profound mind-altering effects (Bisson, Waterhouse, Ebeler, Walker, & Lapsley, 2002; McGovern et al., 2004).”