Archaeologists in China have discovered remnants of 8000-year-old alcohol in Henan province of Central China, Xinhua, a state-run Chinese news agency reported. The researchers told the news agency that they had found 8000-year-old clay pots, which they believed to be the earliest evidence of Chinese people using a specific type of mould monascus to make alcohol. Monascus is a purplish-red-coloured mould that is used in the production of some fermented foods in China and Japan. Such foods include rice wine, red yeast rice and kaoliang brandy. Monascus purpureus is also used as a colouring agent for Peking Duck, an imperial area recipe that is still well known.
Archaeologists discovered the pots at the Peiligang cultural site. The clay pots had a large amount of monascus – a type of fungus – with its branched and spore-bearing structures, Li Yongqiang, an Assistant Researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences’ Institute of Archaeology, told Xinhua.
The history of liquor in China goes back to about 9,000 years ago. Pottery discovered at ancient sites were found with dried residues of brewing beer made from rice, grapes, honey and hawthorn. The liquor production in Ancient China is believed to follow a process similar to the ones found in Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt. However, legends and myths in China associate the invention of alcohol to the God of Wine Yidi who brewed alcohol and presented it to emperor Yu the Great in 2100 BC.
The Peiligang cultural site, where the pots with monascus were discovered, is an ancient site in north-central Henan that dates back to some 8,000 years old to the Chinese Neolithic period. Using tools from stone sickles to bone teeth scrappers, the Peiligang culture is believed to be one of the oldest Chinese cultures that used to make pottery. The archaeologists named the culture after the place – the Peiligang village in the Xinzheng county – where the first of the ancient sites was discovered in 1977. According to archaeologists, the Peiligang culture had little political organisation and the society was egalitarian.
Read all the Latest News, Breaking News and Coronavirus News here.