Photo: Xinhua News Agency
Liquid found inside an ancient bronze vessel has been confirmed to be distilled spirit, pushing back the history of this type of alcohol in China to more than 3,000 years ago, according to the Jinan Archaeological Research Institute in East China's Shandong Province on Wednesday.
The liquid was found in an owl-shaped bronze utensil dating back to the Shang Dynasty (c.1600BC-1046BC), which was unearthed at the Daxinzhuang Ruins in Jinan, the capital of Shandong, in 2010. The archaeologists could tell that there was a small amount of liquid inside the container but didn't open the utensil until recently as it was sealed by the rust.
The newly confirmed distilled spirit dates back to over 3,000 years ago. The utensil is currently stored at the institute, an official with the institute surnamed Liu told the Global Times on Wednesday.
A sample of the liquid was sent to the Joint International Research Laboratory of Environmental and Social Archaeology at Shandong University for testing, and was then confirmed to contain ethanol.
Fruit wine and rice wine, which only undergo fermentation without distillation, will retain sugar and proteins and will not completely degrade even when buried for a long time.
The liquid remaining inside this bronze vessel, stored in a closed, oxygen-free environment for a long period, has been identified as containing only water, ethanol, ethyl acetate, and other components, indicating that it is a type of distilled spirit, Wu Meng, associate researcher with the lab, told the Xinhua News Agency.
Fang Qi, dean of the School of Archaeology at Jilin University, told the Global Times on Wednesday that the new discovery fills the gap in the production of distilled spirits from the Shang Dynasty to the Han Dynasty (206BC-AD220) in China, making it a significant archaeological discovery.
Although China has a long history of brewing alcohol, with ancient Chinese using grains to make alcohol as early as the Neolithic period, there had been no record of early distillation of alcohol in China, Fang noted.
After about 3,000 years, the bronzeware had rusted while buried in the ground. The rust tightly connected the lid with the body of the utensil, effectively preventing the evaporation of the liquid inside it, according to the Shandong-based newspaper Qilu Evening News.
Research into the origin of Chinese distilled spirits has always been an important topic in the history of science and research into alcohol culture.
With the continuous advancement of domestic archaeological work, a series of Han Dynasty distillation devices have been unearthed, including a Western Han (206BC-AD25) distillation device unearthed from the tomb of the Marquis of Haihun in East China's Jiangxi Province and a distillation device unearthed from the Xinmang tomb in Xi'an.
These archaeological discoveries indicate that at least during the Han Dynasty, distillation technology had already existed in China, Wu said.
In October 2024, a research team from the historical and cultural heritage conservation research center attached to Zhengzhou University in Central China's Henan Province discovered that the technique of distilling spirits in China had already existed as early as the Western Han Dynasty.
The center conducted simulation experiments using a replica of the distiller excavated from the tomb of the Marquis of Haihun. The experiments confirmed the distiller's function was to produce distilled spirits.