Beer, ale, lager, or mead: whatever name it may have ascribed to it, this potent potable is one of the oldest beverages in existence. Through hieroglyphics, scholars have traced beer made of barley back to 6000 BC Sumeria and Babylonia (modern day Iraq). The Alulu Tablet – one of the earliest pieces of Sumerian writing dating back to around 2000 BC - contains the “Hymn to Ninkasi”. Ninkasi was the goddess of the harvest and brewing and this hymn not only honored her in a religious sense, but it was also a recipe for beer making.
The First Brewers
It has long been believed that the Sumerians were the first peoples to perfect the art of brewing. Yet in his book, The Barbarian’s Beverage: A History of Beer in Ancient Europe, Max Nelson offers a different theory. Nelson writes of several ancient Greek references to “barley wine” in the 7th century BC as being proof of the beverage’s existence in the western world either around the same time if not before the Sumerians' time line. It is clear however, that Greeks - being wine drinkers - viewed beer consumption as being a habit of the barbarians.
Artwork found on 4500 year old Egyptian tombs show how beer was made. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, these reliefs showed the process of beer making by taking crushed barley, mixing it with water, drying the paste into cakes that later, when mixed crumbled and combined with water “the cakes gave an extract that was fermented by microorganisms accumulated on the surfaces of fermenting vessels.” The facility of transporting ready-made barley cakes made this the ideal drink for fighting forces and laborers.
Beer in Europe
These rudimentary techniques were introduced to Europe via the Middle East. According to Roman Historians Pliny and Tacitus, the Saxons, Celts, Nordic and Germanic tribes imbibed ale. Shards of pottery with residue of grains, honey and other possible beer-making ingredients were found in Scotland and date to around 3000 BC. This is not the earliest scientifically recognized chemical proof beer, however. That evidence was discovered at the site of Godin Tepe which is in the mountains of western Iran and dates to around 3500–3100 BC.
Archeologists have found that virtually every society around the globe has had its own beer-like potion. For the most part, beer making was historically simply a part of the meal preparation process. Naturally, with the expansion of society, the production of beer grew as well. By the 7th century AD, brewing beer had left its domestic confines as European monks began making and selling it to the masses.
Brewed Drinks Were Believed to be Harmful
At the height of its daily and per capita consumption in Europe in the late Middle Ages, doctors regarded the brew to be unhealthy. In the 13th century, a physician named Aldobrandino de Siena, in keeping with the belief that beer was no where near as healthy as wine, wrote in Le Regime du Corps, that if a drink be made “from oats, barley or wheat, it harms the head and the stomach, it causes bad breath and ruins the teeth, it fills the stomach with bad fumes, and as a result anyone who drinks it along with wine becomes drunk quickly”. The only positives the doctor gave brewed drink was that it facilitates urination and “makes one's flesh white and smooth.”
The Art of Brewing Endures
Beer, in some incarnation or another, has been around since before any written records could be kept of it. Though it has undergone the addition of certain flavorings and preservatives – hops being one of the first to fit both of these categories – the main ingredients have remained largely unchanged for centuries. Perhaps next time an ice cold beer is popped opened, one should remember and appreciate that this little pleasure is one that has been shared by most of civilizations in centuries past and will be for centuries to come.
References:
Arnold, John P. “Origin And History of Beer And Brewing From Prehistoric Times to the Beginning of Brewing Science And Technology”. Arnold Alumni Association of the Wahl-Henius Institute. 1911
"beer." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2009. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 2009 27 June
Lock, Carrie. Science News. “Original Microbrews” 10/2/2004, Vol. 166 Issue 14, p216-218
Nelson, Max. The Barbarian’s Beverage: A History of Beer in Ancient Europe. books.google.co.uk. Retrieved on 2009-6-26
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