The Backstory: Beer: The Accidental Invention That Changed Civilization

The Super Bowl is days away, and while you’re sipping or guzzling your favorite beer, think about where it originated and how it actually came to be. We’re starting the story with a mistake that happened 13,000 years ago.

DM me if you have a story you’d like me to cover. On Facebook, it’s Patty Steele, and on Instagram, Real Patty Steele.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, as we stock up for Super Bowl Sunday,
I want you to remember this before football or flat TVs,
before wings and nachos. No wait, in fact, before cities
or money or even written language, human beings were already
making beer, not wine, not whiskey. Beer. Honestly, beer just

(00:21):
might be older than civilization itself, and some historians even
believe its discovery just may have been an accident. I'm
Patty Steele. The prehistoric roots of cracking open a cold one.
That's next on the backstory. But the backstory is back,

(00:41):
all right. As you lean back to watch the Patriots
and the Seahawks face off on Super Bowl Sunday, there's
a pretty good chance you're gonna toss back a frosty
beer or two to wash down those hot wings or
bean dip. Beer is actually still the number one alcoholic
beverage of choice worldwide, But hey, where did it originate?

(01:02):
Anthropologists say beer maybe older than civilization itself, and some
think it's the reason civilization began in the first place.
Like the song says, you want to be where everybody
knows your name, So beer it is got to go
back around thirteen thousand years to when humans were transitioning
from nomadic life to life on a farm. Of course,

(01:25):
one of the first things they grew was grain, barley
and wheat, because it grew easily and was fairly easy
to store, except when it wasn't. Our early ancestors had
one problem. When grain got wet and sat in the sun,
it fermented. The mixture bubbled and smelled strange. It had
like a thin oatmeal consistency, and weirdly people decided to

(01:49):
dig in and then something unexpected happened. They felt relaxed,
social and really really happy. It was like a party
in a jug. But you do have to wonder what
made them tasted. Anyway, beer wasn't invented. It was discovered
by accident, and it didn't end there. Archaeologists literally dug

(02:11):
up evidence of fermented green type beverages in ancient pottery
from Mesopotamia dating back more than seven thousand years. Thus
the civilization argument. Some historians say humans didn't settle down
to make bread, leading to communities. They settled down to
make beer. I mean, once again we see that people,
whether they lived ten thousand years ago or one hundred

(02:33):
years ago, wanted the same things we want right here,
right now they set at a table at a brewpub
of swords after a long day at work to chat
with friends and neighbors and sip a cool one. They
were us. Now fast forward to a mere five thousand
years ago in ancient sumer By that time, beer was
sacred for them. Beer wasn't just a drink. It was

(02:57):
part of daily's survival since water was often un safe
to drink, but beer aok since fermentation killed bacteria. Even
little kids drank a weaker beer. You often were paid
for work in beer rations as much as five liters
a day. The Samearians even wrote a hymn to the
goddess of Beer, Ninkazi, which also doubled as the world's

(03:20):
oldest written brewing recipe. Beer wasn't a luxury. It was medicine, currency, religion,
and it was food. Since it was still a little
bit thick with bits of grain, Sumerians had their own
beer straws. These straws turned the early beer into a meal.
They'd suck up this thick, liquidy drink through long reeds,

(03:42):
which allowed them to leave behind the bigger, more bitter
bits of sediment at the bottom of the big communal jar.
They all shared and stuck their straws in two together.
Sounds festive, right. Try handing out beer straws at your
Super Bowl party. Okay. Inching forward in time, when the
Egyptians began building the Pyramids around twenty five hundred PC,

(04:03):
beer became essential once again. Workers again weren't paid in gold.
They were paid in beer. Each worker got several jugs
per day. Thick, nutritious, and full of calories. Beer kept
these guys hydrated, fed and motivated under the desert sun.
And it wasn't just for the working stiffs. Pharaohs were

(04:24):
even buried with beer jars for the afterlife. To the Egyptians,
beer wasn't recreational, it was eternal. So what next. Well,
after the main part of the Roman Empire collapsed, a
lot of Europe lost access to clean water systems. Disease
spread easily, and once again, beer became safer than water.

(04:45):
But here's the interesting part. Brewing knowledge might have disappeared
altogether if it wasn't for monks. Yeah, medieval monasteries became
the world's research labs. Monks experimented with fermentation, cleanliness, and
the writing great and in the ninth century they had
a breakthrough idea add hops. Hops preserved the beer longer

(05:07):
and balanced out the sweetness with the little bitterness. This
single change transformed beer from a local drink into something
that could travel across countries. In fact, a lot of
today's beer styles traced directly back to monastery recipes, so
monks in the Middle Ages were basically professional brewers with robes.

(05:28):
And then in fifteen sixteen everything changed again. Bavaria passed
one of the most important food laws in history, the
rhine Heidscheboat Yeah you heard me right, rhine Heidschebot God
bless you, or the German Beer Purity Law, meant to
standardize beer purity laws. It mandated that beer could only

(05:49):
contain water, barley, and hops, no yeast at that point,
but it pretty much shaped what we think of as
traditional beer today. Actually, most German breweries still follow it
over five hundred years later. No longer an accident, beer
was now an art. By the eighteen hundreds, the Industrial
Revolution added some basics like thermometers, refrigeration, steam power, and

(06:13):
bottling machines so it could be mass produced by big companies,
making it cheaper and more consistent. Yes, in nineteen twenty,
beer brewers in the US took a massive hit during Prohibition,
but by nineteen thirty three a lot of them were back.
For decades, it was mostly mass produced and not as
interesting as the earlier brews, but in the nineteen seventies

(06:36):
and eighties, craft breweries caught on. They began experimenting again,
bringing back forgotten styles and more flavor. Today, there are
over nine thousand breweries in the US, offering thousands of
styles inspired by recipes older than written history. It's a
full circle, starting in ancient clay pots, then onto industrial factories,

(06:59):
and who back to small batches made by passionate people.
Beer is one of humanity's oldest technologies, a liquid thread
sort of connecting us to people who lived more than
ten thousand years ago, and just like us, after a
long day, they look forward to putting their feet up,
chatting with friends, and sipping a cold one, maybe through

(07:21):
a straw. Enjoyed the Super Bowl. I hope you like
the backstory with Patty Steele. Please leave a review. I'd
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me if you have a story you'd like me to cover.
On Facebook, It's Patty Steele and on Instagram Real Patty Steele.

(07:44):
I'm Patty Steele. The Backstory is a production of iHeartMedia,
Premiere Networks, the Elvis Durand Group, and Steel Trap Productions.
Our producer is Doug Fraser. Our writer Jake Kushner. We
have new episodes every Tuesday and Friday. Feel free to
reach out to me with comments and even story suggestions
on Instagram at Real Patty Steele and on Facebook at

(08:06):
Patty Steele. Thanks for listening to the Backstory with Patty Steele.
The pieces of history you didn't know you needed to know.