Old wine is tasty . Archaeologists have unearthed a bronze pot, dating back some 2,000 years with rice wine, from a Western Han dynasty tomb in central China’s Henan province. It was reported that the Chinese archaeologists believe that the liquid poured from the pot smelled like rice wine.
Shi Jiazhen, head of the Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology in the city of Luoyang said that 3.5 litres of yellow coloured liquid was there inside the pot.
Apart from the bronze pot, a large number of colour-painted clay pots and bronze artifacts were also unearthed from the tomb, which covers 210 square metres, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported. Rice wine of similar age had earlier been found in other tombs dating back to the Western Han period (202 BC to AD 8). Liquor made from rice or sorghum grains were a major part of ceremonies and ritual sacrifices in ancient China. It was often contained with elaborate bronze cast vessels.
Shi said the bronze pot containing the liquid is one of the two big bronze items unearthed from the tomb. The other item is a lamp in the shape of a wild goose, which was the first of its kind found in the city of Luoyang, capital of 13 dynasties, with a history of 3,000 years.
Fang Qin, curator of the provincial museum, said that the new findings are crucial for the study of the funeral customs of the Qujialing culture, a late Neolithic culture discovered in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River.
