'World's oldest brewery' found in cave in Israel, say researchers
Researchers say they have found the world's oldest brewery, with residue of 13,000-year-old beer, in a prehistoric cave near Haifa in Israel. The discovery was made while they were studying a burial site for semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers.
Brewing beer was thought to go back 5,000 years, but the latest discovery may turn beer history on its head. The findings also suggest beer was not necessarily a surplus of making bread as previously thought. The researchers say they cannot tell which came first, and in October's issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, they suggest the beer was brewed for ritual feasts to honour the dead [DOI: 10.1016/j.jasrep.2018.08.008] [DX].
When will Dogfish Head seize the research?
Related: Beer Domesticated Man
Archaeologists Unearth 5,000-Year-Old Brewery in China
5,000-Year-Old Chinese Beer Recipe Recreated by Students
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The domestication of wild grains has played a major role in human evolution, facilitating the transition from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to one based on agriculture. You might think that the grains were used for bread, which today represents a basic staple. But some scientists argue that it wasn't bread that motivated our ancestors to start grain farming. It was beer. Man, they say, chose pints over pastry.
Beer has plenty to recommend it over bread. First, and most obviously, it is pleasant to drink. "Beer had all the same nutrients as bread, and it had one additional advantage," argues Solomon H. Katz, an anthropology professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Namely, it gave early humans the same pleasant buzz it gives us. Patrick E. McGovern, the director of the Biomolecular Archaeology Project for Cuisine, Fermented Beverages, and Health at the University of Pennsylvania, goes even further. Beer, he says, was more nutritious than bread. It contains "more B vitamins and [more of the] essential amino acid lysine," McGovern writes in his book, Uncorking the Past: the Quest for Wine, Beer, and Other Alcoholic Beverages. It was also safer to drink than water, because the fermentation process killed pathogenic microorganisms. "With a four to five percent alcohol content, beer is a potent mind-altering and medicinal substance," McGovern says, adding that ancient brewers acted as medicine men.
We hold these things to be self-evident: The Internet is for Pr0n, and Civilization is for Beer.
Archaeologists have unearthed an approximately 5,000-year-old brewery in China:
It's the oldest beer-making facility ever discovered in China – and the evidence indicates that these early brewers were already using specialized tools and advanced beer-making techniques. For instance, the scientists found a pottery stove, which the ancient brewers would have heated to break down carbohydrates to sugar. And the brewery's underground location was important for both storing beer and controlling temperature – too much heat can destroy the enzymes responsible for that carb-to-sugar conversion, explains Patrick McGovern, a biomolecular archaeologist at the University of Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia, who was not involved in the current research.
[...] The research group inspected the pots and jugs, and found ancient grains that had lingered inside. The grains showed evidence that they had been damaged by malting and mashing, two key steps in beer making. Residue from inside the uncovered pots and funnels was tested with ion chromatography to find out what the ancient beer was made of. The 5,000-year-old beer "recipe" was published [DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1601465113] on Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Stanford University students have attempted to recreate a beer using a recently described 5,000-year-old recipe:
The ancient Chinese made beer mainly with cereal grains, including millet and barley, as well as with Job's tears, a type of grass in Asia, according to the research. Traces of yam and lily root parts also appeared in the concoction.
Liu said she was particularly surprised to find barley – which is used to make beer today – in the recipe because the earliest evidence to date of barley seeds in China dates to 4,000 years ago. This suggests why barley, which was first domesticated in western Asia, spread to China. "Our results suggest the purpose of barley's introduction in China could have been related to making alcohol rather than as a staple food," Liu said.
The ancient Chinese beer looked more like porridge and likely tasted sweeter and fruitier than the clear, bitter beers of today. The ingredients used for fermentation were not filtered out, and straws were commonly used for drinking, Liu said.
YouTube video (2:12).
Revealing a 5,000-y-old beer recipe in China (open, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1601465113) (DX)
Previously: Archaeologists Unearth 5,000-Year-Old Brewery in China
Beer Archaeologists Are Reviving Ancient Ales — With Some Strange Results
Patrick McGovern is scientific director of the Biomolecular Archaeology Project at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. The author of Ancient Brews: Rediscovered and Re-Created, he is known as the "Indiana Jones of Ancient Ales."
McGovern took a swing at ancient chicha, too, with the brewery Dogfish Head in Delaware. "We chewed the red Peruvian corn for eight hours. The insides of our mouths were pretty cut up and our jaws were aching and so on, but it worked," he says. The final product involved peppercorns and wild strawberries. Dogfish Head has been making chicha ever since, both serving it to customers at the brewery and shipping it out.
The trouble with re-creating ancient brews is that it's actually an impossible task, even for McGovern, who uses techniques like mass spectrometry and gas chromatography to figure out what an ancient vessel once contained.
"You don't have 100% certainty by any means," says McGovern. "The basic ingredients I think we can be pretty sure of. What we don't know about is likely microorganisms, the bittering agents, or other additives that we might have missed." In a way, we will never truly be able to taste what King Midas was drinking, or the brews of Machu Picchu. Or even something much more recent, like George Washington's favorite porter.
Ancient chicha = chewed corn and quinoa partially fermented in spit.
Boston Dogfish Beer Head Company should patent all the ancient ales.
Related: Beer Domesticated Man
Archaeologists Unearth 5,000-Year-Old Brewery in China
5,000-Year-Old Chinese Beer Recipe Recreated by Students
13,000-Year-Old Beer Residue Found in Prehistoric Cave in Israel
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Sunday September 16 2018, @06:15AM (14 children)
-r.
So I once read anyway.
I speculate that fermentation was originally not just a way to get wasted but also a way to preserve nutrients. But we'll never know because they never put Nutrition Facts labels on hooch.
I do know that fermentation was used as a way to keep drinking water sanitary. While not strictly correct that the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock because they ran out of beer, it's not far off: the crew of the ship they had hired were concerned about having enough low-alcohol Small Beer to make it all the way back to England, so the Pilgrims agreed to be delivered a lot farther north than the location they originally planned for.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by Arik on Sunday September 16 2018, @07:30AM (12 children)
And yes, a little alcohol helps to keep the bacteria down.
I suspect we had fermented fruit juice for millennia before we had proper beer. It's not hard to do that, in fact you might have to work to avoid it. Ripe fruit in a tropical environment can setup fermentation very quickly. I'm pretty sure I've even seen chimps pull that trick off.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Sunday September 16 2018, @08:20AM (1 child)
I was a resident of the LA County Central Men's Jail's 2600 Mental Health Block for a couple weeks during the Summer of 1985.
One of my fellow incarcerated wingnuts started w00ting with great joy as he announced the success of his homemade wine: bits of fruit in water with the yeast supplied by the jail's tasty and nutritious fresh-baked bread.
I tried that later myself, but the deputies spotted it during a cell inspection. No Drunky For Mikey.
(That same jail also served us Sheriff Sherman Block-Brand milk with each meal, from the contented cows at the LA County Honor Rancho.)
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by suburbanitemediocrity on Sunday September 16 2018, @08:41PM
Anything with sugar in it (carbohydrates in flour are a sugar) will naturally ferment and turn into wine. Beer is just wheat wine. Rum is sugar cane wine that is distilled. Brandy is distilled grape wine. Vodka is traditionally distilled potato wine. Whisky is distilled beer.
All more or less
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Sunday September 16 2018, @10:17AM (2 children)
A number of animals enjoy fermented fruit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIDJ-sTuoO8 [youtube.com]
(Score: 1) by fritsd on Sunday September 16 2018, @12:55PM (1 child)
Bad aftereffects of eating too many rotting apples: with a head that big, can you imagine the headache?!?
a mööse once bit my sister [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday September 16 2018, @02:21PM
Holeeee shit! I guess he climbed up in the tree, trying to get the last few apples? He'd be embarrassed if he knew it was posted on Youtube for all the world to see.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 16 2018, @12:37PM (1 child)
You're thinking of filtered beer. Leave the yeast in and it's quite healthy.
(Score: 1) by fritsd on Sunday September 16 2018, @12:59PM
Hefeweizen [wikipedia.org] ...
Trappist [wikipedia.org] ...
yum!
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 16 2018, @01:22PM (2 children)
Table beers (very low alcohol) were brewed as an alternative to drinking the local water in many places. Besides the alcohol, beer also has hops and a low pH to keep bacterial contamination low. Plus, the process of making beer involves boiling the liquid which sanitizes it.
Table beers were not notably nutritious, but there were styles brewed to be so, with lots of carbohydrates and residual (unfiltered) yeast. The best known are the big dopplebocks brewed by the monks to get them through Lent [catholicnewsagency.com].
(Score: 2) by suburbanitemediocrity on Sunday September 16 2018, @08:35PM (1 child)
I believe hops were added to beet later on for flavour. The only two ingredients you need are flour and water. Just mix a few spoons of flour in glass of water and let it sit on the counter for a few days. It's start to smell like beer and be alcoholic. I wouldn't recommend drinking it. Add some sugar to speed up the process and boil it to kill off competing molds.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Sunday September 16 2018, @11:51PM
I thought hops were added as a preservative.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by suburbanitemediocrity on Sunday September 16 2018, @08:50PM
A friend who lived in Ghana said people could get very drunk by leaving coconuts out in the sun for a while and drinking the juice which had fermented.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Monday September 17 2018, @10:29AM
Depends on what you call nutritious. Back in the distant past, the problem wasn't staying thin, it was getting enough calories to survive. By that metric beer, especially the murky high carb beer, is actually pretty good.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by suburbanitemediocrity on Sunday September 16 2018, @08:28PM
When I make pizza, I let the dough sit on the counter for a day or two. I've gotten buzzed from eating the raw dough before it's baked. And I've made sourdough bread leaved with natural yeasts in the environment.
So yeah, anyone who develops flour will very soon discover beer once their flour become damp. But there are also many other natural sources of alcohol - all fruits will naturally turn into wine. Most coconuts you find laying on the ground are likely alcoholic.