Buzz
According to recent archaeological discoveries in the Middle East, humans have been drinking beer for over 13,000 years. As Science magazine reports, traces of wheat- and barley-based beer were found in stone mortars carved into the floor of a cave near Haifa, Israel.
The Raqefet Cave, used as a burial site by the Natufians, a semi-nomadic hunter-gatherer group who also created the world’s oldest known bread, discovered in Jordan in July, casts doubt on earlier evidence that placed beer's origins at just 5000 years ago.
Beer was once thought to be merely a by-product of bread-making, but archaeologists now suggest that beer might have been consumed during ceremonial feasts “to honor the dead and/or to strengthen social bonds among the living,” as outlined in their study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.
Surprisingly, the Stanford University researchers who made this discovery were not searching for traces of alcohol. “We did not set out to find alcohol in the stone mortars, but just wanted to investigate what plant foods people may have consumed because very little data was available in the archaeological record,” said Li Liu, a professor of Chinese archaeology at Stanford, in a statement.
Researchers suggest that beer brewing might have inspired the Natufians to begin cultivating cereals in the region, but it remains unclear whether beer or bread came first. The stone mortars found in the cave floor were likely used for storing and grinding wheat and barley, as well as for brewing beer.
The drink was not quite the beer we are familiar with today. According to the BBC, the ancient beer resembled a “gruel-like” consistency similar to porridge. It was probably weaker than the beer we drink now as well.
