Africa, pre-11000 BCE
BEER is so old we don’t know how old it is.Most of the earliest known cultures brewed it, and some scholars believe it was the quest for beer, not bread, that motivated our hunter-gatherer ancestors to settle down and cultivate grain.
But ancient cave dwellers weren’t sitting around the fire quaffing crisp lagers. Archaeological evidence shows that beer took thousands of years to evolve into what we drink today.
Here’s a sampler of brews that represent important milestones and innovations.
Paleolithic mystery beer
Possible ingredients: Millet, fruit, spices, herbs and grasses – and who knows what else.
Possible flavour profile: Sour, tart, sweet, fruity, spicy, herbal.
The first beer probably came from Africa, because that’s where the first people were, said Patrick McGovern, a biomolecular archaeologist at the Penn Museum and a long-time authority on ancient fermented beverages.
Beer is basically fermented grain. First, moisture makes the grain sprout, priming its enzymes to transform starch into sugar. Yeast then converts the sugar into alcohol.
Humans would have discovered the process by happy accident, probably in many places across the world at various times: a pile of grain left in the rain and sun, some wild yeast latched onto its sugar, and a few days later, whoa! They learnt to replicate the process, creating beer traditions nearly everywhere.
Although no evidence has been found of a Paleolithic African brew – “the holy grail of fermented beverages,” according to McGovern – he suspects it would have been made from wild millet or sorghum, grains long cultivated and used for beer in Africa, and flavoured
