20. Which Came First, Bread or Beer?
Long before we evolved into Homo sapiens, our distant proto-human ancestors had experienced the intoxicating effects of alcohol from fermented berries and grapes. Early humans probably climbed trees to pick berries, liked their sweet taste, and began to collect them. After a few days, fermentation kicked in, and juice at the bottom of any container that held the fermenting grapes or berries was transformed into a low alcohol content wine. Thus, humanity accidentally discovered how to make one of its favorite alcoholic beverages. Beer was also discovered accidentally.
For generations, scholars have assumed a beer discovery timeline that began with the invention of agriculture, after which we settled down and began to grow grain crops. Then somewhere along the line, somebody noticed that if the sourdough starter used to make bread was left out for too long, it started to bubble, and produced an interesting liquid: beer. However, new archaeological discoveries have challenged that assumption, and gave rise to the Beer Before Bread hypothesis. As seen below, it argues that hunter gatherers brewed beer thousands of years before the transition to permanent agricultural settlements.
