Evidence of Beer-Making 5,000 Years ago at Site in Shaanxi, China

Abstract

Like home brewers today, people living on the Central Plain of China from 3400 to 2900 BCE actively concocted beer in period-appropriate vessels, which archaeologists recently unearthed at Mijiaya near the Chanhe River in Shaanxi province. These artifacts “represent a beer-making toolkit,” and the Mijiaya site is the oldest beer-making facility ever discovered in China, according to Jiajing Wang at Stanford University in Stanford, Calif., and her collaborators. This date of about 5,000 years ago for early brewing in China is comparable to estimates for when ancient brewing began further west in Mesopotamia, including reference to the drinking of such beverages that appear in the Old Testament. Details appeared 26 April 2016 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (doi:10.1073/pnas.1601465113).