Did Ancient Societies Take Up Farming to Brew More Beer?

This festive season, whatever you may do, chances are you didn’t have to hunt it or gather it from the wilderness yourself. We owe this to our ancestors, who underwent one of humanity’s most significant transformations around 10,000 years ago, transitioning from a lifestyle of hunting and gathering to one of farming.

The reasons behind this shift remain puzzling, especially since our species thrived for roughly 300,000 years without practices like milking, sowing, or shepherding. Various theories have been proposed. Perhaps agriculture provided a more dependable food source, or it reduced reliance on neighbors. Maybe the significance of a particular location related to spirituality, or perhaps a desire to remain close to buried loved ones played a role.

Or was it social friction that shaped this change? It might sound humorous, but just as today, alcohol could have served as a social lubricant. Maintaining relationships often involves sharing drinks, and if our ancestors wished to facilitate these connections, they would have needed to produce cereals. So could it be that alcohol motivated our ancestors to change their way of life?

Anthropologists have pondered this possibility since the 1950s, but at that time, technology was lacking to test such ideas. One challenge is differentiating between beer and bread, with many believing bread was more likely to kick-start agricultural growth. The archaeological evidence shows that both baking and brewing involved similar processes. Wang Jiajing from Dartmouth College and others needed to figure out how to distinguish the starches from beer and bread and determine which appeared first.

This led a select group of archaeologists, including Wang, on a quest to uncover the earliest known signs of alcoholic beer production.

One promising starting point is ancient settled societies, such as Egypt, where beer production was clearly established. Archaeologists frequently uncover distinctive pottery that resembles fermentation tanks. “They simply refer to it as ‘beer bottle’,” Wang explains. Recently, she and her colleagues confirmed these vessels were used for brewing and storing alcohol by identifying characteristic microscopic remains found inside. At Hierakonpolis in southern Egypt, for instance, fragments of beer bottles were discovered containing starch granules from grains, yeast cells, and “beer stones” made of calcium oxalate. Evidence suggests beer was brewed there from a mixture of wheat, barley, and grasses around 5,800 to 5,600 years ago, predating the first pharaohs by over 2,000 years.

“They were producing beer on an almost industrial scale,” said Wang. However, these early brews were not like today’s ales or lagers. “They sprouted the grains, cooked them, and used wild yeast to convert sweetness into alcohol,” she explains. The result was not a clear liquid, but rather a “slightly fermented sweet porridge.”

Such findings offer a template for the kind of evidence needed to confirm prehistoric beer production. The next obstacle was identifying how far back such evidence could reach.

In 2016, Li Liu from Stanford University, along with Wang and colleagues, uncovered ceramic vessels at the Mijiayao archaeological site in northern China. They identified traces of beer brewing from 5,000 years ago. This culture used unique plant mixtures for their beer, including broom sorghum millet, Job’s tears millet, barley, and tubers. Five years later, Wang and Liu identified further evidence of ancient drinking at the Xipu ruins near Xi’an, which belonged to the Yang Shao culture. Large pots fermented rice and grains using a fungus called red mold, which is still involved in making fermented foods like rice wine using the starter Kuu. They theorized that elites may have consumed beer at “competitive feasts.”

Oldest Alcoholic Beer

However, the earliest evidence comes from the mountain culture in the lower Yangtze River in southern China, discovered by Liu, tracing back to one of the earliest agricultural societies from approximately 10,000 to 8,500 years ago. In 2021, Wang’s team highlighted findings from the Kaminoyama site, showing that rice and Job’s tears, along with unidentified tuber remnants, were likely used for beer brewing during funerary feasts, indicating a practice highly integrated into their culture.

Just a year ago, Liu and her team described the earliest evidence of brewing in East Asia, analyzing 12 pottery shards from the Kaminoyama site’s deepest layer, dating back 9,000 to 10,000 years. “This depicts the early stages of the Ueyama culture,” she notes. The fragments featured rice, Job’s tears, traces of acorns, lilies, and remnants of carcasses. The Kuu starter included both Monascus and yeast.

At this juncture, Liu confirms, “domestication was already in progress,” and beer production was clearly a factor as well. “When we have surplus grain, we also produce surplus alcohol,” she adds.

Yet while there’s a strong connection, evidence is still elusive. Surprisingly, the oldest bread predates Ueyama beer and actually relates to the establishment of agriculture. Archaeologists discovered evidence of bread-like products, created by the Natufians at Shubaika 1 in Jordan, who generally maintained a foraging lifestyle despite some periods of settlement.

To add complexity, evidence has emerged suggesting that these hunter-gatherers may also have brewed beer. At the Rakefet Cave in Israel, a Natufian burial ground with around 30 interred individuals, Liu, Wang, and their colleagues discovered three stone mortars filled with various wild plants, including wheat, barley, and beans, which were fermented to create a porridge-like beer. These vessels date back between 11,700 and 13,700 years, indicating that brewing predates agriculture.

The ongoing debate about which came first, beer or bread, remains unresolved. “We don’t have conclusive evidence to clarify that yet,” Liu remarked. Similarly, it’s uncertain whether beer, bread, or another factor played the most significant role in the agricultural revolution, which ultimately laid the foundation for our food and drink traditions today.

“I wouldn’t be astonished if both were motivating factors,” Wang stated. After all, history is rarely straightforward—especially prehistory.