This is Part 2 of The Story of Beer, our journey through the people, ingredients, discoveries, and traditions that put beer in our glass.

Once humans began settling into permanent communities, beer came along for the ride.

In some of the earliest civilizations, beer wasn’t simply something people enjoyed at the end of the day. It became part of work, religion, trade, and everyday life.

Beer in Mesopotamia

Nearly 5,000 years ago in Uruk, in what is now Iraq, workers could receive beer as part of their wages.

Imagine getting your paycheck and discovering that part of it came with a foamy head.

Beer was a regular part of life in Mesopotamia, and it became important enough to appear in laws, literature, and religious traditions.

The famous Code of Hammurabi included regulations involving beer production and establishments that served it.

Apparently, even ancient civilizations eventually reached the point where somebody said, “We probably need some rules around this.”

Meet Ninkasi

The Sumerians even had a goddess associated with beer.

Her name was Ninkasi.

The Hymn to Ninkasi served as both a prayer and a way of preserving brewing knowledge. In societies where literacy was limited, songs and poems helped people remember important information.

That included how to make beer.

Beer also appears in the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the world’s oldest surviving works of literature.

When your beverage makes it into humanity’s earliest literature, you’ve clearly established yourself.

Beer Beyond Mesopotamia

Beer wasn’t confined to one civilization.

Ancient Egyptian records contain references to beer, and archaeological and written evidence shows fermented beverages appearing across a wide geographic area.

The Ebla tablets from Syria, dating to around 2500 BC, provide evidence of beer production.

In China, fermented beverages made with rice and fruit existed thousands of years ago.

During India’s Vedic period, texts mention a beer like drink called sura.

The Greek writer Xenophon later described beer production in Armenia.

Different ingredients and methods were used in different places, but the basic discovery was remarkably universal.

Give humans starch, water, and fermentation, and sooner or later somebody seems to make a drink out of it.

Bread, Beer, and Civilization

Beer and bread were closely connected.

Both depended on grain. Both required people to understand how grain could be transformed into something entirely different.

Producing reliable supplies of grain encouraged agriculture, storage, trade, and permanent settlements.

Historians still debate whether beer actually helped cause civilization, but it clearly became part of civilization very early.

And once people learned how to brew it, they weren’t about to stop.

Next Pour

Ancient beer didn’t necessarily contain the ingredient many of us now associate most closely with beer: hops.

Before hops became the standard, brewers flavored their creations with an assortment of herbs, fruits, spices, and whatever else seemed like a good idea at the time.

Next up: Before Hops, Beer Got a Little Weird.

 

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