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In the early days of history, there were no hierarchies or private property, just a vast savanna to explore and a new world to discover with endless natural resources; such were the beginnings of what we today understand as humanity.
Communities were fraternal; relationships were erotic, open, friendly, and uninhibited; such were the times of the first Homo sapiens to walk the planet.
It is possible that in many important historical events, beer was merely a spectator; however, it is also interesting to see why it was so important in other moments, even to the point of altering their course.
1. Adaptive Advantages
About ten million years ago, a common ancestor of humans, gorillas, and chimpanzees underwent a mutation in the ADH4 enzyme that made it about 40 times more efficient at metabolizing ethanol, according to the study by Matthew Carrigan and his team published in PNAS.
According to Carrigan and his team, this may have been an adaptive advantage, since the fermentation of fruit fallen from trees gave our ancestors a greater supply of nutrients and, why not, a bit of fun.
Later, the mastery of fire gave humans the ability to control grain mashing and, as a result, eventually develop processes for producing alcohol.
A much-debated hypothesis, known as “beer first”, holds that it was then that we began paying attention to grain and that the need to grow more cereal to produce beer drove sedentarization.
At Göbekli Tepe, in southeastern Turkey, Oliver Dietrich’s team studied large stone vessels more than 11,000 years old and proposed in 2012 that they may have been used to ferment a cereal beverage at ritual feasts.
The oldest evidence of cereal beer brewing comes from Raqefet Cave, in Israel, where Li Liu and her team identified in 2018 residues of a fermented cereal beverage in stone mortars dating back about 13,000 years. The people who made it, the Natufians, were still hunter-gatherers.
Throughout the world, agricultural societies had worse health conditions than hunter-gatherers, with poor sanitation and hygiene, disease, little physical activity, and wars. And yet, humanity did not abandon its settlements.
2. Sedentarism and Monogamy
In this way, man entrenched himself in his home, built grain stores, and invented private property, including within it his wife and children, who were necessary for working the fields and defending territory. He hierarchized society and created the concept of the family, all while continuing to drink beer.
And of course, all of this had an impact on sexuality, primarily in the establishment of monogamy.
It is the old idea of paradise lost, that of a humanity that traded a world without private property, without shame of the body, and without hunger for civilization, materialism, and war.
3. From Nomads to Farmers
It was not until nomadic societies decided to cultivate grain that everything changed; a commercial and dietary revolution was about to take place.
Beer played a very important part in this historical process, as barley was used as an essential food in the diet of the world’s first settled populations.
4. The Code of Hammurabi
Beer also had its place in the oldest laws, and the Code of Hammurabi is evidence of this, since this great stone containing the principles of law, order, and punishment of ancient Mesopotamia included several laws on taverns and the sale of drink.
Law 108 condemned the tavern-keeper who did not accept grain as payment for drink, charged in silver, and set her prices so that the price of the drink was lower than that of the grain. Her punishment was to be thrown into the water.
This is probably the origin of the often-repeated legend that Hammurabi drowned the brewer who made bad beer in his own beer. No law in the code punishes the taste of the drink.
5. Louis Pasteur and Yeast
In the history of beer, one need not go back centuries of physical and social evolution, nor establish extreme quality laws, Louis Pasteur is a perfect example.
Pasteur was a French chemist and microbiologist who showed that fermentation is the work of living yeasts and that other microorganisms are what spoil wine and beer. He first developed, for wine, the heating process we now call pasteurization.
On June 28, 1871, he filed a patent for his version applied to beer, which consisted of heating the liquid to at least 55 °C for a few minutes, according to the Institut Pasteur. In 1876 he brought this research together in Études sur la bière.
6. Roosevelt’s Presidential Campaign
Beer has also been used for political purposes. In the early 1930s in the United States, the famous “Prohibition” was living through troubled times and was on the verge of disappearing, in large part thanks to the presidential campaign of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Roosevelt, in his quest to lift a country out of its great economic collapse in 1929, promised to repeal this law, so that beer-loving American citizens would not be driven underground.
Once president, on March 22, 1933, he signed the Cullen-Harrison Act, which from April 7 allowed the sale of beer of up to 3.2% alcohol by weight. Prohibition ended at the federal level on December 5, 1933, with the ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment.
As we have seen, the moments in which beer has shaped the course of humanity are countless, scientific and cultural alike, some more significant than others, but all of them profoundly influencing our evolution as a society.
10 Curious Facts About the History of Beer
The history of beer spans thousands of years, and today it is the third most popular drink in the world, behind water and tea, and the most widely consumed alcoholic beverage.
Keep reading for a concise look at 10 historical facts about brewing. They will make your drink taste even better!
1. The Importance of Women
In Mesopotamia, beer had its own goddess, Ninkasi. The Hymn to Ninkasi that celebrates her also describes the steps of brewing.
At that time, brewing beer was a noble profession in the hands of elite women or priests. Some types of beer were even reserved for religious ceremonies.
2. Beer Bread
The earliest chemical evidence of beer in the region consists of residues more than 5,000 years old found in vessels from Godin Tepe, in western Iran, published in 1992 in Nature. They most likely tasted quite different from the beers we know today.
The brewing process used by the Sumerians in Mesopotamia resulted in what we now call beer bread, a half-baked bread soaked in water to obtain a fermented drink, often flavored with honey and herbs.
Since it shared the same basic ingredients as bread, it was considered equally nutritious.
Farther away there are even older remains, such as the Jiahu vessels in China, with residues of a mixed fermented beverage of rice, honey, and fruit dating back about 9,000 years. It is one of the pieces of evidence that fermented cereal beverages were invented more than once in places with no contact with each other.
3. Ancient Egypt
In Ancient Egypt, beer was part of the daily diet. Tombs sometimes reveal stone and wooden depictions of the brewing process.
Analysis has concluded that the Egyptians were familiar with different types of beer made from different cereals. In addition, beer was often used in medicines and served religious purposes.
4. Beer and Tea
In the 17th and 18th centuries, coffee and tea spread across Europe and took away part of beer’s place as an everyday drink.
In the United States the blow was far greater with Prohibition, from 1920 to 1933, which banned the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages and coincided in its final years with the Great Depression.
American breweries had considerable difficulty recovering from those difficult years.
5. Germany
The Romans preferred wine, but to the north of their empire beer was the usual drink.
Tacitus described it in his Germania, from the year 98, as a liquor of barley or wheat, fermented into a likeness of wine.
6. The Middle Ages
In medieval Europe, the brewing process was largely reserved for monks, the most educated segment of society.
However, beer was a typical drink, consumed by all social classes for its nutritional value. The idea that it was drunk because water was always dangerous is largely a myth.
7. Industrialization
The Industrial Revolution had a huge impact on beer production. With the steam engine that James Watt perfected from 1765 onward, industrialization reached beer.
The addition of the thermometer (around 1760) and the hydrometer (around 1770) made the brewing process increasingly efficient, turning beer into a mass-market product.
8. Beer in Buckets
The beer bottle was an expensive container until its manufacture was mechanized in the early 20th century. That is why many people would carry buckets known as “growlers” to taverns to have them filled, a custom that some brewpubs still keep.
9. Beer Marketing
In the 20th century, advertising and marketing played a significant role in the growing popularity of different types of beer.
At sales and auctions of brewery memorabilia, you will always find many advertising posters that define this era, from brewery signs from the 1930s to typical promotional mirrors from the 1980s.
10. Weihenstephan
The world’s oldest brewery, according to its own history, has been brewing beer for nearly 1,000 years. It is the Bayerische Staatsbrauerei Weihenstephan, on the hill of the same name in Freising (Germany), which dates the start of its brewing to 1040.
Does your beer suddenly have a better aroma and more intense flavors? The history of beer is just as fascinating as that of wine.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
1. What genetic mutation allowed early human ancestors to consume alcohol, and what advantage did it provide?
About ten million years ago, a common ancestor of humans, gorillas, and chimpanzees underwent a mutation in the ADH4 enzyme that made it about 40 times more efficient at metabolizing ethanol. According to its discoverers, this may have been an adaptive advantage, because it made it possible to make better use of fermented fruit fallen from trees.
2. What is the connection between beer and the shift from nomadism to sedentarism?
One hypothesis holds that the desire to brew beer helped drive cereal cultivation and sedentarism. The remains from Raqefet Cave, in Israel, show that the Natufians were already fermenting cereal some 13,000 years ago, before agriculture, although they do not prove that beer was the cause.
3. Is it true that the Code of Hammurabi drowned bad brewers in beer?
No. No law in the code punishes the taste of beer. Under Law 108, the tavern-keeper who did not accept grain as payment and set her prices so that the price of the drink was lower than that of the grain was to be thrown into the water, and Law 109 punished with death the tavern-keeper who did not hand over the conspirators gathered in her tavern.
4. What was Louis Pasteur’s discovery concerning beer, and what process did he design?
Pasteur showed that fermentation is carried out by living yeasts and that other microorganisms spoil beer. In 1871 he patented a method for preserving it by heating it to at least 55 °C for a few minutes, the same principle he had previously applied to wine, and in 1876 he published Études sur la bière.
5. What was the “beer bread” made by the Sumerians thousands of years ago?
It was an ancient brewing method consisting of half-baked bread soaked in water to produce a fermented drink, often flavored with honey and herbs, and considered a highly nutritious food.
References
- Carrigan, M. A., Uryasev, O., Frye, C. B., et al. (2015). Hominids adapted to metabolize ethanol long before human-directed fermentation. PNAS, 112(2), 458-463. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1404167111
- Dietrich, O., Heun, M., Notroff, J., et al. (2012). The role of cult and feasting in the emergence of Neolithic communities. New evidence from Göbekli Tepe, south-eastern Turkey. Antiquity, 86(333), 674-695. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003598X00047840
- Liu, L., Wang, J., Rosenberg, D., et al. (2018). Fermented beverage and food storage in 13,000 y-old stone mortars at Raqefet Cave, Israel: Investigating Natufian ritual feasting. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 21, 783-793. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2018.08.008
- Michel, R. H., McGovern, P. E., & Badler, V. R. (1992). Chemical evidence for ancient beer. Nature, 360, 24. https://doi.org/10.1038/360024b0
- McGovern, P. E., Zhang, J., Tang, J., et al. (2004). Fermented beverages of pre- and proto-historic China. PNAS, 101(51), 17593-17598. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0407921102
- King, L. W. (trans.). The Code of Hammurabi, laws 108 to 111. The Avalon Project, Yale Law School. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/ancient/hamcode.asp
- Institut Pasteur (2023). Pasteur and Carlsberg: a long history of science and friendship. https://www.pasteur.fr/en/node/19808
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