Were Chinese first to make wine?

PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania, Dec 7 -- Neolithic people in China may have been the first in the world to make wine, according to scientists who have found the earliest evidence of winemaking from pottery shards dating from 7,000 BC in northern China.

Previously the oldest evidence of fermented beverages was dated to 5400 B.C. and was found at the Neolithic site of Hajji Firuz Tepe, in Iran.

But in a study published in the science journal PNAS on Monday, Dr Patrick McGovern of the University of Pennsylvania said laboratory tests on pottery jars from the village of Jiahu in Henan province had shown traces of a mixed fermented drink of rice, honey, and either grapes or hawthorne fruit.

"This evidence appears to suggest that the Chinese developed fermented beverages even earlier than the Middle East, or perhaps at the same time," McGovern told Reuters. "Maybe there were some indirect ties between the Middle east and Central Asia at that time in ancient civilization."

The archeological site of Jiahu, in the Yellow River Basin, is renowned for its cultural and artistic relics. Among those discovered are ancient houses, kilns, turquoise carvings, stone tools and flutes made from bone, thought to be the earliest examples of musical instruments ever found.

McGovern also analyzed samples of 3,000-year-old wine from hermetically sealed bronze vessels found in Shang Dynasty burial tombs from the Yellow River Basin.

The liquid was preserved because a thin layer of rust had sealed the bronze jars completely, he said.

A small sample of the remains of the wine, a clear colorless liquid, gave off a faint aroma similar to nail polish remover or varnish. McGovern said when he first smelled the wine it was floral scented.

The ancient wine was flavored with herbs and flowers or tree resins, and placed in the tombs of high-ranking individuals to sustain them in the afterlife.

One of the ancient jars contained a liquid that had traces of wormwood, suggesting the beverage might have been an early version of absinthe.

McGovern, a molecular archeologist at the university's Museum of Archeology and Anthropology, analyzed the samples using chemical and molecular tests, which he then compared to natural botanical products known to be available at that time. (Reuters)

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