Strange 7,700-year-old China bottle find offers insights into transition between ancient cultures
- Bottle belonged to Peiligang people but resembles later pottery style
- Scientists believe it may have been used to make yeast for alcohol fermentation
Archaeologists in China have unearthed an unusually-shaped 7,700-year-old bottle that offers unique insights into the relationship between two neolithic Chinese cultures.
The container was unearthed in Henan province, central China, at a site associated with the Peiligang culture, which existed from around 7000BC to 5000BC and is considered one of the birthplaces of Chinese agriculture.
The Peiligang people were also one of the oldest in China to make pottery, but the recent discovery is more similar to pieces made by the Yangshao culture (5000BC-3000BC).
The Yangshao were an ancient people who lived along the Yellow River, considered the cradle of Chinese civilisation.
“This discovery provides fresh and crucial material evidence for exploring the origin and development relationship between the Peiligang culture and Yangshao culture,” said Li Yongqiang, associate researcher at the Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, in mainland press reports.
The bottle has a small mouth and pointed triangular bottom and similar objects have been discovered in Yangshao burial sites, ash pits and homes.
The Yangshao culture, which succeeded that of the Peiligang, was famous for its development of pottery, and excavations suggest that the people buried their young in painted pottery jars.
However, at 10cm long, the most recent bottle is shorter than similar objects from the Yangshao, and there is still debate about whether those bottles were used to carry water, help in fermentation or were simple burial treasures.
Li hypothesised that, combined with previous evidence that the Peiligang had discovered how to make red yeast mould for fermentation, the bottles could have been a container used for making the yeast.
Evidence of red rice yeast fermentation was presented in October 2023 in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.
Archaeologists argued that the presence of rice and a mould made of Monascus fungi indicated the Peiligang people were making a fermentation starter, called qu, which ancient people used to make alcohol.
The alcohol could have been made using various ingredients, ranging from rice, millet, yams and Job’s tears, a type of grass.
For the Peiligang people, rice was not overly important for subsistence, and it was often used to make alcohol, usually as part of a mortuary ritual.
Making alcohol was a crucial reason rice cultivation began spreading through China around 9,000 years ago.
Scientists believe the process started in the lower Yangtze River valley and spread northwards to the northern Yellow River.
“The Peiligang and Shuiquan sites in the middle Yellow River region serve as early examples of this diffusion process,” the study authors wrote.
Other artefacts discovered at the recent Peiligang site, believed to be around 7,600 to 8,000 years old, included ostrich shells, red iron ore and stone items.
These are important because the Peiligang site is one of the oldest villages discovered in China, meaning it provides a crucial piece of evidence in understanding how people transitioned from hunter-gatherer societies in the Paleolithic period to agricultural cultures in the Neolithic era.
The village was first inhabited in 7000BC, and it was believed to have been abandoned in 5700BC after flooding.
