After water and tea, beer is the most popular beverage, and among alcoholic drinks, it is the most popular. With nations like Germany, Belgium, and Austria famous for their beer, it easily earns its reputation as a timeless beverage. However, an interesting fact that few know is that beer is the most ancient alcoholic beverage as well, with its roots stretching back to prehistoric times.
The specific date of beer’s creation is unknown, due to the lack of written records, but it is believed that it emerged at least after 10,000 BCE. After the Ice Age, cereal crops like wild wheat and barley became widespread, well-suited as they were to the environment. When hunter-gatherers of the Paleolithic Age transitioned to a sedentary lifestyle, a process that lasted dozens of centuries, agriculture became a central aspect of life.
Considering the inedibility of raw grains, it is likely that they were eaten in soups after being soaked, along with other ingredients like fish and berries. However, cereal grains differed from other foods because they were so long-lasting, leading to the custom of storing harvested crops to eat during winter or times of famine, at which point the grains would be consumed as porridge or gruel. Though this feature initially made cereal grains a reliable but ultimately mundane food, humans soon discovered another property.
Through their role in soups, humans would have realized that adding grains to liquids made them thicker, due to the starches that were released when faced with heat. Moreover, when left to soak in water, these grains became sweet, a process that would become known as malting. However, this new quality eclipsed the others, as it became known that consuming gruel that had fermented for some number of days made the drinker intoxicated, a pleasant and high sensation. Experimentation would reveal that longer periods of fermentation increased this quality.
Though pottery had been unavailable during this time, people would have still facilitated the production of beer by using shells, hollowed-stones, wood, and other materials; moreover, they would have chosen to reuse the same containers when making beer, as doing so enhanced the beverage’s taste, as corroborated by Mesopotamian and Egyptian historical records. Some supplemented the beer with other ingredients like spices or honey, creating numerous variations. In Egypt, there were at least seventeen different types.
One reason for the popularity of beer was because it was safer to drink than certain water sources, which were contaminated with human waste and led to illness. Though it is unlikely that ancient humans knew just why beer was safer, they still associated it with health, even having pharmacopoeias (medical recipes) that mixed beer with other substances to cure varying symptoms. Interestingly, when combined with other foods like bread, dates, and meat, ancient people were provided with all the necessary nutrients, with beer acting as the primary source of vitamin B.
Beer was also associated with prosperity; in fact, the beverage was used as currency in ancient times, easily divisible as it was. In Egypt, pharaohs paid workers in beer to build pyramids. In Mesopotamia, beer was a key part of government-dispensed rations, and senior officials were given five sila of beer while junior officials were only given two sila. Husbands would also pay their wives’ families with beer, as part of their dowries. The value of beer also led people to use it in religious ceremonies, such as by pouring the first cup to the ground, or burying pharaohs with beer for them to drink in the afterlife.
Historical records continue to make the relevance of beer in everyday life evident; “bread and beer” was often used as a substitute for the word “food,” and regardless of gender or social status, beer was a part of almost every meal. In Egypt, “bread and beer” was even considered to be a form of greeting.
Like today, beer was used as a social tool, symbolizing friendship and trust. Because beer was shared from a single vessel, drunk through straws, it could be truly said that people were sharing a drink, in comparison to the sharing of meat, which was divided into cuts of varying qualities. Ancient depictions of beer depict figures drinking from a single container through straws; such actions demonstrated hospitality. Today, when two people clink their glasses, their beverages reunite in a single body of liquid, continuing a tradition that originated thousands of years ago.
Source:
Standage, Tom. A History of the World in 6 Glasses. Atlantic Books, 2006, pp. 17–35.
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