- [Narrator] Sumer 4,000 years ago.
The woman recites a hymn
to the goddess Ninkasi as she works.
"Ninkasi, it is you who water the earth covered malt.
"The noble dogs guard it even from the royals.
"It is you who soak the malt in a jar.
"It is you who spread the cooked mash on large reed mats.
"It is you who holds with both hands
"the great sweet wart, brewing it with honey and wine.
"You place the fermenting fat,
"which makes a pleasant sound,
"appropriately on top of a large collector vat.
"It is you who pour out the filtered beer
"of the collector vat.
"It is like the onrush of the Tigris and the Euphrates."
Then, she takes a sip.
This is the first known recipe for beer,
the drink that built civilization.
(bright music)
Thanks so much to World Anvil
for helping us draft today's historical tale.
Now, while you watch the five little books drop
in our opening graphic, you may have thought to yourself
are they really gonna spend a whole series on beer?
I mean, is there really that much to say about it?
(chuckles) Oh, yeah.
Yeah, there is.
In fact, our biggest problem
isn't going to be how to fill this series,
but actually how much stuff we're going to have to leave out
because the story of beer is that massive.
From its origins of being brewed in neolithic baskets,
it rose to an industrialized beverage
shipped around the world,
facilitating many historical events along the way,
from helping the British takeover India,
to the establishment of food quality laws,
not to mention pubs and beer halls
have been the headquarters of many revolutions,
from the Green Dragon Tavern of the Sons of Liberty
to Hitler's Beer Hall Putsch.
Beer's story is a global one.
No one person or culture invented it.
In fact, beer was probably more discovered than created
and that discovery happened
all around the world independently,
so far back that we have no idea
when it first came into being.
See, beer not only predates writing,
it also predates pottery, domesticated grain,
and possibly even settled villages and organized religion.
It's ancient to the point of being primordial,
first appearing in the archeological record
via traces of it on a potsherd
discovered in what is now Iran,
a potsherd that's 7,000 years old.
So given how ancient beer is,
how, when and why it came to be requires some speculation.
Now, alcohol would've been known to early humans,
even in hunter gatherer societies,
because it occurs naturally.
Fruit left out too long can naturally ferment
and create alcohol.
And that fermentation happens when a single cell fungus
called yeast feeds on sugars,
producing carbon dioxide and ethanol as waste products.
Seriously, forget dogs or cats.
Yeast is actually man's best friend.
I mean, just look at these little yeasty boys.
Awe, cute little bubbly buddies.
(cat meowing)
Sorry, Zoe, but it's kind of true.
Yes, dogs helped ancient humans with hunting and security
and cats definitely kept the rodents down
and I know you do a wonder on my taxes,
but yeast eats carbohydrates and poops out alcohol,
an action crucial for making both bread and beer.
Though neolithic humans didn't understand fermentation
or what alcohol was, they knew the important stuff.
It was a substance that induced a state
of altered consciousness and tasted pretty good.
Good enough, at least, to attract elephants
and monkeys who also loved to get smashed on rotting fruit.
This fermented fruit is what you know as wine,
which we associate with grapes today
but has been historically made with any sweet fruit,
from plums to dates or even in the sap of palm trees.
Beer, by contrast, comes from fermented grain
which does not appear naturally.
And to make it, you need semi-settled agriculture.
So here's how one theory suggests beer came to be.
First, hunter gatherers realized
that grains were a steady source of nutrition.
If you pulled grains from wild cereals
like barley and wheat then soaked or boiled them in water,
they made an oatmeal or thin gruel
that was rich in nutrients.
Further, this could be added to soups as a thickener.
And grain, unlike fruit and meat,
could easily be stored for later.
Throw a bunch of grain in a basket and,
provided it doesn't get wet, it can last years.
But you know, lugging around a basket of grain
isn't really ideal while chasing a mammoth.
So these hunter gatherers started forming settlements
where wild grains were abundant.
There, humans learned to make bread
11,000 to 14,000 years ago.
Then at one point or another,
some dough was contaminated by yeast,
causing it to ferment and rise
due to the carbon dioxide forming bubbles.
Beer followed a bit later as an offshoot of bread making.
And perhaps fittingly, given beer's reputation
as a relaxing drink, the prevailing theory
for this cultural defining beverage's discovery
involves someone being lazy.
The thought goes that a grain store,
maybe a basket, was left out in the rain and sprouted.
Wild yeast then colonized the mixture
or someone either accidentally or on purpose
dropped bread into it.
Then afterward, someone decided to drink
the resulting fermentation
and found that it made them pleasantly intoxicated.
And presto, the first keg stand, metaphorically.
Then it wasn't long
until people were making beer on purpose.
It appeared on the tabulation accounts
of ancient Sumer and a recently discovered brewery site
in China is 5,000 years old.
Our first recipe, quoted in this episode's introduction,
comes from a hymn to the Sumerian goddess Ninkasi,
praising her creation of the drink
while telling brewers had to replicate it.
It was recorded 3,900 years ago, but is probably older.
Yeah, beer was so important it had its own goddess,
which makes sense
because it was a cornerstone of civilization.
Humans in the fertile crescent
increasingly took up settled agriculture
in order to subsist off of bread and beer,
a lifestyle that led to larger populations,
permanent structures and irrigation, AKA cities.
In these settlements,
they kept grain in common storehouses overseen by priests.
And one theory goes
that these grain stores gradually evolved,
gaining more religious functions,
to become the first temples.
And writing was invented to catalog their contents.
In fat times, the temple would collect the grain,
and then in lean times, they would distribute it.
And that distribution often came in the form of beer.
Indeed, during the construction of the pyramids,
beer was one of the main forms of payment.
In fact, there's even a theory that goes
given the ecology of the area,
the wine mentioned in the Bible
might have been a translation error
and what people were actually drinking was beer.
In fact, it was a major selling point for living in cities.
Eat bread, divide labor, ride out bad harvests
and drink beer.
Heck, even in the epic of Gilgamesh,
which we have a series on and you can watch here,
the wild man Enkidu is civilized
and turned human by the consumption of bread and beer.
Beer had become the symbol
of complex society and necessary for living in cities.
See, the problem with cities back then
is that human waste quickly poisoned nearby water sources,
making them unsafe to drink.
But the alcohol in beer
was sufficient to kill any microbes that affected humans.
So beer was not just a pleasure drink,
but a necessary technology for urban living.
It was also a source of food,
since beer back then was thicker than we think of now,
more like a gruel or a Guinness.
Kidding, kidding, love my steak and a glass.
Calorie dense and filling,
it was one of the first things the temple gave out
for famine relief.
In fact, it was so thick
that there were things floating in it and people drank it
through reed straws to filter out the bigger bits.
This was also done in a communal bowl,
starting a trend that would continue until today,
where beer was a drink consumed socially in common.
A sign of trust,
since with everyone drinking beer from the same vessel
there was no chance of poisoning.
And along with other drinks
from common containers, like coffee, tea, or wine,
beer became synonymous with hospitality.
Also, ancient people made a range of beer
knowing that if they tinkered with the ingredients,
they could get different results.
From ancient Egypt,
we see records discussing different types
and styles of beer with different alcohol strengths.
Granted, most beer people drank was short turned around
batches that were only 1% alcohol by volume,
but there were others left to sit longer to become stronger.
Plus, there were flavor additives
like honey, spices and fruit.
And though fermentation process was a mystery,
there was an understanding that some prized magical pots,
called in records the pots that make the beer good,
simply produced better brew even without dropping bread in.
This was because yeast had permanently colonized
cracks and imperfections in the pots.
But to the ancient people,
beer's transformation appeared magical,
especially since it created an altered state when consumed.
So it's no wonder that it was used in religious rituals
and associated with a range of goddesses.
Oh yeah, goddesses.
Because beer was largely made in the household
at the same time as baking bread for thousands of years,
brewing was primarily a woman's task.
But further north in Europe change was coming,
both to the process of making and consuming beer itself
and for the women who controlled production.
But until we get to that part of the story next time,
please history responsibly,
by which, of course, we mean while researching,
you should keep track of all of your notable figures,
lineages, dates, quotes, maps
and other fun facts like tastiest beverages.
You know, if only there was a beloved service
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