How Beer Brewed 5,000 Years Ago In China Tastes Today (thestreet.com)

schwit1 quotes The South China Morning Post: Stanford University students have recreated a Chinese beer using a recipe that dates back 5,000 years. The beer "looked like porridge and tasted sweeter and fruitier than the clear, bitter beers of today," said Li Liu, a professor in Chinese archaeology, was quoted by the university as saying. Last spring, Liu and her team of researchers were carrying out excavation work at the Mijiaya site in Shaanxi province and found two pits containing remnants of pottery used to make beer, including funnels, pots and amphorae. The pits dated to between 3400BC and 2900BC, in the late Yangshao era. They found a yellowish residue on the remains of the items, including traces of yam, lily root and barley...Liu taught her students to recreate the recipe as part of her archaeology course.
One student following a second ancient beer recipe created a beverage that "smelled like funky cheese."

Comments

Makes sense.

[Anonymous Coward]

Beer in ancient times was often a way of preserving calories (due to the alcohol) and a means of sustenance, as opposed to today when it is primarily a way to get goofy at NASCAR events.

Chemist?

[Luthair]

Shouldn't you be a food chemist to 'recreate' a recipe from a 5000-year old sample?

Re:Chine did something original?

[hey!]

It was the fatal consequence of blinding awesomeness: blinded arrogance. China was the wealthiest, most advanced civilization in the world for over a thousand years; at certain point it becomes natural to look at something like that as a birthright. And when that happens you stop looking forward and outward and start looking inward and backward.

When the epitaph of the United States is written, this is what it will say: "America: Killed by landing on the Moon." After that Americans simply can't believe anyone else in the world can do anything better than we can. We must have the best cell phone networks, the best healthcare system, and, even though we despise it, the best education system. We'd never look at what countries that are beating us in education are doing. If they're beating us they must be cheating; the system must be rigged.