[BITList] The World's Oldest Brewery

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  The World's Oldest Brewery May Date Back 13,000 Years

ancient beer


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The team of researchers was led by Li Liu, a professor of Chinese 
archaeology at Stanford University. Together, they analysed stone mortar 
traces, which were around 13,000 years old. These mortars were found at 
a Natufian graveyard in Raqefet Cave, close to where Haifa is located today.

The idea that the original domestication of cereals was for beer 
production and not bread is far from new. In fact, it's been around 
since the 1950s and has been becoming increasingly popular due to 
findings that beer was an essential part of the society of the Natufians.

ancient beer

The team was not actively searching for beer-related evidence, but 
simply came across it while trying to discover what plant-based food the 
Natufians used to eat. It turns out that their findings are evidence of 
a large-scale brewing operation, which Liu called “the oldest record of 
man-made alcohol in the world.”

The team believes that their discovery may be between 11,700 and 13,700 
years old, which would predate the oldest-known evidence of bread 
making, which was located at a Natufian site in East Jordan. The 
researchers believe that the Natufians brewed and drank beer as part of 
a ritual to honor the dead.

ancient beer

What's interesting though, is that even the most professional brewers 
today probably wouldn’t recognize this ancient beer. This is because it 
would have looked like a thin variation of porridge, which would 
include ingredients such as oats, barley, wheat, flax, and certain legumes.

The researchers believe that a 3-step process was used to brew this 
ancient beer. Firstly, they would leave the grains to germinate in 
water, before draining and drying them out, thereby producing a malt. 
Next, they would mash and heat them. Finally, they would add some wild 
yeast and leave the entire mixture to ferment over time.

ancient beer

To test this hypothesis, the team actually recreated this ancient 
brewing process step by step. Amazingly, they claim to have managed to 
recreate a brew which would have been very similar to the Natufians' 
ancient beer.

“This discovery indicates that making alcohol was not necessarily a 
result of agricultural surplus production,” Liu said. “But it was 
developed for ritual purposes and spiritual needs, at least to some 
extent, prior to agriculture.”





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