Wine may have originated in China

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 BC and was found at the Neolithic site of Hajji Firuz Tepe, in Iran. But in a study published in the science journal PNAS this month, 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. 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. "This evidence appears to suggest that the Chinese developed fermented beverages even earlier than in the Middle East, or perhaps at the same time," McGovern said. "Maybe there were some indirect ties between the Middle East and Central Asia at that time in ancient civilization."
REUTERS