Inventions & Discoveries · Farming and food

Beer

Beer is one of the oldest human-produced drinks, made by fermenting cereal grains; the earliest archaeological evidence of fermentation is 13,000-year-old residues of a gruel-like beer used by the Natufians for ritual feasting at Raqefet Cave, in present-day Israel. The first written records of brewing come from Mesopotamia, where a Sumerian poem to the brewing goddess Ninkasi, about 3,900 years old, holds the oldest surviving beer recipe. Hops, known from at least the 9th century, made beer keep and turned brewing in late medieval northern Europe into an export industry.

Beer
Image: Ur-Amma, the scribe who created the text, Dr Tom L. Lee who photographed it, SilkTork who created the image. · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

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First known
13,000 years ago
Where
Raqefet Cave, Israel

NoteHow beer was first made is debated; the earliest chemically confirmed barley beer, from Godin Tepe in Iran, is 5,400–5,000 years old.

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See also

Cite this entry
APA
The Epoch Institute. (2026). Beer. In The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/beer
MLA
“Beer.” The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia, The Epoch Institute, 2026, https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/beer. Accessed .
Chicago
The Epoch Institute. “Beer.” The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. 2026. https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/beer.
Harvard
The Epoch Institute (2026) ‘Beer’, The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. Available at: https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/beer (Accessed: ).

Last reviewed October 2026Random entry ↻