People have been knocking back beers for 13,000 long time , accord to new archaeologic findings out of the Middle East . AsSciencemagazinereports , evidence of wheat- and barleycorn - based beer was discover inside stone mortars carve into the floor of a cave near Haifa , Israel .
The Raqefet Cave was used as a burial site by the Natufians , a group of semi - wandering huntsman - gatherer who were also responsible for for theworld ’s oldest known dinero , which was discovered in Jordan in July . These findings challenge previous evidence that traced the origin of beer back just 5000 years .
Beer was also antecedently believed to be just a by - Cartesian product of loot - making , but archaeologists say that is n’t necessarily the showcase . Instead , researchers consider beer may been served during ritual feasts “ to venerate the dead and/or to raise group cohesion among the living , ” researcher wrote in theirpaper , published in theJournal of Archaeological Science : write up .
unco , the Stanford University research worker who made this discovery were n’t even looking for grounds of inebriant . “ We did not set out to find intoxicant in the stone mortars , but just wanted to investigate what plant foods mass may have consumed because very lilliputian datum was available in the archaeological platter , ” Li Liu , a professor of Chinese archaeology at Stanford , allege in astatement .
Researchers speculate that beer brewing may have inspired the Natufians to crop cereal grass in the region , but it ’s not presently bed whether beer or simoleons came first . The mortars grind into the cave floor were reportedly used for storing and pound wheat and barleycorn , as well as brewing beer .
The beverage was n’t precisely what we know as beer today , though . According to theBBC , the prehistoric beer was “ gruel - like ” and similar to porridge . It was in all likelihood weaker than modern beer , too .
[ h / tScience ]
