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World's earliest tipple discovered in China

22:00 06 December 04, NewScientist.com news service

Fermented beverages made from honey, grapes and hawthorn fruit were stored in vessels sometimes found at burial sites (Image: Zhiqing Zhang, Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology of Henan Province)

Chemical tests on ancient fragments of broken pottery show that Chinese villagers were brewing alcoholic drinks as far back as 7000 BC. That beats the previous record for the oldest evidence of brewing, found in Iran and dated at about 5400 BC.

The oldest known Chinese texts, from the Shang dynasty period of 1200 BC to 1046 BC, mention three types of alcoholic drink. Archaeologists had suspected that fermented drinks had been developed much earlier because older bronze vessels and pottery resembled those used for the Shang dynasty drinks.

However, solid evidence had been lacking until a Chinese-American team studied potsherds - radiocarbon-dated at 7000 BC to 6600 BC - from the oldest portion of Jiahu, a village from the Neolithic period in Henan province. This cultural period is characterised by primitive crop growing and the use of flint tools and weapons.

The team compared residues extracted from the potsherds with liquids remaining in tightly sealed vessels dated to the Shang dynasty. Their analysis of the Jiahu residues revealed traces of compounds found in rice, as well as the ancient Shang dynasty wines.

They found that 13 of the 16 potsherds tested had contained the same material. It was "a consistently processed beverage made from rice, honey and a fruit", say the researchers.


Tartrate source


The analysis revealed tartrates - a chemical concentrated in the seeds of grapes and hawthorn trees which are common in China. And indeed the only fruit seeds excavators reported finding at the Jiahu site came from these plants.

Although fermentation can occur naturally, wines must be sealed in containers to keep bacteria from converting the alcohol to vinegar. Jiahu is the oldest Chinese site with pottery - wood or leather containers would not have survived and so alcoholic beverage production could have gone even further back into Chinese history.

Patrick McGovern at the University of Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia, US, who led the study believes that honey, grapes and hawthorn fruit gave the Jiahu brewers the sugar and yeast they needed to start fermentation. Later Chinese brewers developed a technique called mould saccharification, which breaks the complex carbohydrates of rice into simple sugars that can be fermented. That process yielded more specialised drinks including ancient and modern rice wines.

Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0407921102) NS text by Jeff Hecht

i 4spajder

It's super-coca! Modified bush boosts narcotics output

By Andy Webb-Vidal in Bogotá
Published: December 7 2004 02:00 | Last updated: December 7 2004 02:00

Colombian police have identified a genetically modified and super-hardy coca "tree" that yields up to eight times more cocaine than a traditional shrub.

The discovery, detailed in a counter-narcotics police intelligence dossier obtained by the FT, underscores the lengths to which Colombian producers are going to outsmart US efforts to curb the drugs trade.

"In their search for greater profits, drug traffickers appear to have entered the world of genetically modified crops," the dossier says, referring to a new variety of coca found in the remote Sierra Nevada in northern Colombia.

The government of President Alvaro Uribe, aided by US companies such as Dyncorp, is striving to end Colombia's long-held status as the world's biggest cocaine producer. Its main tool is aerial fumigation of illicit crops with a potent herbicide.

However, while official figures show that the area under cultivation in Colombia has almost halved since 2000, to about 212,000 acres, coca productivity per acre appears to be rising.

With the help of foreign agronomists, the police contend, traffickers have developed a leafier strain of plant that grows to 9ft, at least twice the height of the traditional shrub. The size and strength of the plant makes it herbicide-resistant.

More important, the modified coca contains about four times more cocaine alkaloid.

"The coca tree appears to be the result of a pilot project, but it can produce about eight times more cocaine," an anti-narcotics police officer said. "If it is sown on a large scale, aerial fumigation would be pointless."

Coca bushes are tended by peasant farmers, who harvest the leaves and sell them to Colombia's various guerrilla and paramilitary armies.

Working from well equipped laboratories often hidden deep in the jungle, the paramilitaries convert the leaves into a paste and then pure cocaine before selling the final product to groups specialised in smuggling and money-laundering.

The strain of super-coca, the police say, is expected to be used by smaller and more secretive drugs producers, who in the past five years have replaced Colombia's once-monolithic cartels.

[sivka]

Dok sam zivela u Pesti saradjivala sam sa Kolumbijskom ambasadom. Nesto mi pade na pamet da obnovim veze i poznanstva.  

[milant]

Dok sam zivela u Pesti saradjivala sam sa Kolumbijskom ambasadom. Nesto mi pade na pamet da obnovim veze i poznanstva.  

Da i pozajmi jedno par sadnica....

[sivka]

Dok sam zivela u Pesti saradjivala sam sa Kolumbijskom ambasadom. Nesto mi pade na pamet da obnovim veze i poznanstva.  

Da i pozajmi jedno par sadnica....

Nije lose poceti i od jedne...zrno po zrno...