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04Part One · History

The First Tea: From Chewing the Leaf to Brewing It

Where tea began, the oldest tea found by archaeologists, how pressed and aged tea came about, and what chemists find in tea today.

In this chapter

  • What We Know About Teatea in the earliest Chinese materia medica, the oldest tea from tombs, and tea carried to Tibet
  • What Is Found in Teas Todaytheanine and its discovery, and lovastatin in post-fermented pu-erh

Questions this chapter answers

  • Where is tea still eaten rather than drunk?

    The answer is in the book →

  • What is the oldest tea ever found, and where was it found?

    Leaves left over from boiling or brewing, in a bowl from a tomb at Zoucheng in Shandong — about 2,400 years old, identified in 2021.

  • How did tea reach the Tibetan Plateau, and why was it pressed and aged?

    The answer is in the book →

  • Who discovered theanine, and when?

    Yajiro Sakato, at Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry in Kyoto, isolated it from green tea in 1949.

  • Does pu-erh contain the same molecule as a cholesterol drug?

    The answer is in the book →

Short answers only. Chapter 4 gives the full account, with 6 footnotes to 6 sources.

Read more in the book

Sources

6 footnotes to 6 sources. Full references are in the bibliography.

  1. Shennong bencao jing 神農本草經. Reconstructed by Sun Xingyan and Sun Fengyi, 1799.
  2. Lu, Houyuan, Jianping Zhang, Yimin Yang et al. “Earliest Tea as Evidence for One Branch of the Silk Road across the Tibetan Plateau.” Scientific Reports 6 (2016): 18955. DOI 10.1038/srep18955.
  3. Jiang, Jianrong, Guoquan Lu, Qing Wang and Shuya Wei. “The Analysis and Identification of Charred Suspected Tea Remains Unearthed from Warring State Period Tomb.” Scientific Reports 11 (2021): 16557. DOI 10.1038/s41598-021-95393-w.
  4. Sakato, Yajiro. “Studies on the Chemical Constituents of Tea: Part III. On a New Amide Theanine.” Nippon Nōgeikagaku Kaishi (Journal of the Agricultural Chemical Society of Japan) 23, no. 6 (1950): 262–267. Submitted August 1949. DOI 10.1271/nogeikagaku1924.23.262.
  5. Juneja, Lekh Raj, Djong-Chi Chu, Tsutomu Okubo et al. “L-Theanine — a Unique Amino Acid of Green Tea and Its Relaxation Effect in Humans.” Trends in Food Science & Technology 10, no. 6–7 (1999): 199–204. DOI 10.1016/S0924-2244(99)00044-8.
  6. Zhao, Zhen-jun, You-zhao Pan, Qin-jin Liu and Xing-hui Li. “Exposure Assessment of Lovastatin in Pu-erh Tea.” International Journal of Food Microbiology 164, no. 1 (2013): 26–31. DOI 10.1016/j.ijfoodmicro.2013.03.018.