[This is the seventh in a series of articles about the Neolithic Revolution, or First Agricultural Revolution, that saw most of humanity switch from hunter gatherers to settled farmers and agriculturalists. For the start of the series, Part I, click here]
Human civilization only started after our prehistoric ancestors learned how to grow grains, and switched from wandering hunter gatherers to settled farmers. It has long been taken for granted that the discovery of bread drove the early farmers to settle down. However, an alternative theory argues that it was not bread that led to farming, but beer. Some prehistoric hunter gatherers discovered how to make beer, and liked it. Grain is beer’s key ingredient, so as seen below, what is sometimes nicknamed “beer before bread theory” posits that the beer-loving hunter gatherers settled down to tend their grain fields, in order to have all the beer they wanted.
Did the First Farmers Take Up Farming Because of Bread?
Ever since the first proto-humans came down from the trees and walked upright, our species survived as hunter gatherers. Even after we evolved into Homo sapiens, we continued to collect our food from the abundance of nature as hunter gatherers for hundreds of thousands of years. Then, about twelve thousand years ago, some humans domesticated animals and plants, and switched from hunter gatherers to a settled life of farmers and agriculturalists. What they did caught on.
Within a relatively short time in historic terms, most of humanity settled down and adopted agriculture. Hunter-gatherers were reduced to a tiny minority, banished by the far more numerous settled farmers to the least desirable lands. Why did the first farmers take up farming, though? For generations, it was assumed that it was because of bread. Some bright Stone Age folk learned how to cultivate grains. After much experimentation, they out how to grind grain into flour, mix it into dough, and make bread.
Was Beer, Not Bread, the Motivation for Humanity’s First Farmers?
As it turned out, bread proved to be a miracle food: a complete meal in one tasty lump. On top of that, the grains from which bread was made could last for years after they were harvested. So people began to till, plant, and weed in an effort to grow enough to feed their group year-round. However, grains can also be turned into beer. An intriguing theory argues that people first grew grain not because they wanted bread, but because they wanted booze.
Is it possible that the roots of settlement and eventual civilization lay in beer, not bread? Even before we evolved into modern Homo sapiens, our distant proto-human ancestors had experienced the intoxicating effects of alcohol from fermented grapes and berries. Early humans probably climbed trees to pick berries, liked their sweet taste, and began to collect them. After a few days, fermentation kicked in. Juice in containers that held fermenting grapes or berries was transformed into a wine with low alcohol content.
The ‘Beer Before Bread’ Hypothesis
Fruit fermentation is how humanity accidentally discovered how to make one of its favorite alcoholic beverage, wine. Beer was also discovered accidentally. For generations, scholars have assumed a beer discovery timeline that began with the invention of agriculture, after which we settled down and began to grow grain crops. Then somewhere along the line, somebody noticed that if the sourdough starter used to make bread was left out for too long, it started to bubble, and produced an interesting liquid: beer.
However, new archaeological discoveries have challenged that assumption, and gave rise to the Beer Before Bread hypothesis. As seen below, it posits that hunter gatherers brewed beer thousands of years before the transition to permanent agricultural settlements. Stanford University researchers have recently found evidence of an extensive beer brewing operation, dating back to 13,000 years ago, in Raqefet Cave near Haifa, Israel. As Professor Li Liu, the research team’s leader put it: “This accounts for the oldest record of man-made alcohol in the world”.
Humans Have Always Liked Booze
The people who brewed the Raqefet Cave beer, the Natufians, were hunter gatherers and not settled farmers. Indeed, their beer brewing predates by millennia the earliest known permanent settlement, and predates most estimates of when bread was first made. That discovery lends supports to the notion that beer, not bread, is what set the stage for civilization. A group of Natufians wanted to drink beer, and for that, they needed grain. In order to have a steady supply of grain for beer, they needed to settle down to tend their grain fields. Beer was a key motivation for why our species settled down into permanent farming communities that gave rise to civilization.
The Love of Beer Might Have Made Humans Settle Down
Indeed, the love of booze might have been a key motivation for why hunter-gatherers settled down to farm, not just in the Middle East, but all over the world. The first cultivated crops, such as wheat and barley in the Middle East, or rice in the Yangtze River Valley, are great for alcoholic drinks, whether beer or rice wine. The desire to get drunk is an ancient behavior. People liked the psychoactive effects of getting sozzled: among other things, it relieved stress and anxiety. Also, drinking with strangers lowered inhibitions, reduced everybody’s ability to deliberately lie and deceive, and thus made people more trusting and trustworthy. That enhanced trust improved the ability to cooperate, and created – or strengthened – bonds with others.
[This is the seventh in a series of articles about the Neolithic Revolution, also known as the First Agricultural Revolution. It saw most of humanity switch from hunter gatherers to settled farmers and agriculturalists
I: Why Did Humans Switch From Wandering Hunter Gatherers to Settled Farmers?
II: When Humans Got Too Good at Hunting
III: When Prehistoric Hunter Gatherers Depleted the Available Resources
IV: The Domestication of Sheep and Goats
V: Newly Emergent Farmers Had to Work a Lot Harder than Hunter Gatherers
VI: Did the Discovery of Bread Cause the Shift From Hunter Gathering to Farming?
VII: Was it Actually Beer, Not Bread, that Motivated Hunter Gatherers to Become Farmers?
VIII: Was it Wheat That Domesticated Humans, Instead of the Other Way Around?
IX: Early Farmers Enjoyed a Bonanza, But it Became a Borderline Bust for Their Descendants
X: Humanity Benefited Greatly From the Switch to Farming, But it Came at a High Cost
XI: Humankind’s Greatest Revolution]
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Some Sources & Further Reading
Diamond, Jared – Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997)
Gonick, Larry – The Cartoon History of the Universe (1990)
Harari, Yuval Noah – Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2014)
Slingerland, Edward – Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization (2021)
