The oldest known fermented drink was brewed in China around 7000 BCE

Long before grape wine appeared in the Middle East, people in the Neolithic village of Jiahu, in China’s Yellow River Valley, were already brewing. Chemical analysis of residues clinging to early pottery, led by archaeochemist Patrick McGovern of the Penn Museum, identified a mixed fermented beverage of rice, honey, and hawthorn fruit and/or grape.

The residues date to about 7000-6600 BCE - roughly 9,000 years ago - making this the earliest chemically confirmed fermented drink in the world. It predates the oldest evidence of grape wine from the Middle East by more than 500 years.

This is the first direct chemical evidence for early fermented beverages in ancient Chinese culture.

Part beer, part wine, part mead, the drink doesn’t fit any modern category. The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2004, suggest that the urge to ferment something drinkable is one of humanity’s very old habits.