This age-old question has likely fueled many a pub debate and thanks to archaeology and science, we now have the evidence. James Bayley does some digging.
Long before tankards and corkscrews, nature had already been quietly experimenting with fermentation. Overripe fruit left to its own devices will ferment into something alcoholic, thanks to naturally occurring yeasts.
Anthropologists suggest that “fruit wines were probably discovered as soon as man tried to collect and store sweet fruits and berries”. In short, the very first drinkers may have been opportunists who sampled week-old squashed fruit and, pleasantly surprised by the buzz, went back for seconds.
Grain-based alcohol, however, required more brainwork. Beer needs starch conversion to sugar, typically achieved by malting, which is unlikely to happen by accident. Wine, in its broadest sense as fermented fruit juice, can arise without human help.
Yet archaeological evidence distinguishes happenstance from intention, so to settle whether beer or wine was truly humanity’s first deliberate drink, we need to look to the spades and mass spectrometers of modern archaeology.
The first brewers in prehistory (before written records)
According to research published in the Journal of Archaeological Science in 2018, the earliest known beer production dates back around 13,000 years to the Natufian culture in what is now Israel.
Archaeologists excavating Raqefet Cave found stone mortars containing residues from a wheat and barley-based beer. These mortars were part of a burial site, leading researchers to conclude that this beer was produced for ritual feasts honouring the dead.
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