Since the early 1950’s debate has raged as to whether beer or bread was the first product made from domesticated crops, and the spark that triggered modern human civilization. The earliest evidence of domesticated grain species have been found at archaeological dig sites across the world, but scientists have only been able to speculate as to their purpose and role in the beginnings of civilization.

In southeastern Turkey, just over 10km from the ancient city of Urfa lies one of the most astonishing archaeological discoveries of our time - Göbekli Tepe. Massive carved T-shaped stone pillars each up to four metres high, weighing between 40-60 tonnes and set in huge concentric circles have been unearthed after being buried for millennia. These pillars are intricately carved to depict plants and animals of prehistory, star formations and human like imagery. But what’s intoxicating about this site, is that it predates stonehenge by 6,000 years.

What’s sets Göbekli Tepe apart from other neolithic sites, is that scientists can precisely date the structures because the whole area was intentionally buried at some point, and has been perfectly preserved for thousands of years (it was only discovered by a local herder who thought one of the rocks he was sitting on didn't quite fit the surrounds). This mammoth task of filling in the site created a hill, which the site derives its modern name from. Göbekli Tepe literally means Potbelly Hill, and stands out from the surrounding countryside.

Among the beautiful carved megaliths are large limestone vessels, with capacities of up to 160 litres each. During excavations it was noted that these stone tubs had a greyish and black substance lining their interior walls, and recently a chemical analysis was conducted to see just what these markings were.

“A first set of analyses made on these substances returned positive for calcium oxalate, which develops in the course of the soaking, mashing and fermentation of grain” - M. Zarkhov, Technical University of Munich

In other words… Beer. Welcome to the Beer-before-bread theory.

Of course not everyone subscribes to the idea that beer domesticated us. Other archaeologists and historians point out how grain is easy to store and keeps for a long time. They say its reliability as a food source is what convinced humans to settle down and raise crops.

However, many are starting to believe that beer may have come before bread for health reasons, and choosing a delicious drop over a bite of bread could have been the most important dietary choice of our distant, long lost brewing brothers and sisters. According to science, beer has more B vitamins and essential amino acids than early bread - and while the alcohol content would have been at the level of a session ale (between 2%-5%), the lack of any semblance of alcohol tolerance would have made early brews feel as potent as a Double Black.

Still with me?

What’s most important though, from a health and safety standpoint, is that the fermentation process would have killed the dangerous microorganisms that were no doubt lurking in the naturally occurring springs and water sources of that time. This would have given early boozehounds an evolutionary advantage over their teetotalling neighbours.

A more recent branch of the “beer before bread” theory comes from Brian Hayden and a team of researchers at Simon Fraser University in Canada. The researchers published a paper in 2013 titled What Was Brewing in the Natufian? An Archaeological Assessment of Brewing Technology in the Epipaleolithic. Sounds daunting… but it’s really not.

The Natufian is the ancient civilization that lived in present-day Syria, Jordan, and Israel, and the Epipaleolithic period was a section of the Stone Age between 20,000 and 10,000 B.C (around the time of Gobekli Tepe). According to Hayden, alcohol was the social lubricant early humans needed to develop an agrarian society. Beer was a treat offered to guests at feasts and gatherings, which led to the formation of alliances, inter-tribe friendships and political structures.

“Beer played a primary role in attracting people to feasts and making them effective mechanisms for creating political structures and power within communities,” Hayden writes, “as well as promoting the production of surpluses on an ever-increasing scale.”

In other words, people needed beer to communicate (Sound familiar?). Early humans had a herd mentality as they were mostly mobile hunter-gatherers, and a rigid social structure came along with it. Jeffrey Kahn, author of Angst: Origins of Anxiety and Depression, argues in The New York Times in 2013 that beer allowed ancient humans to free their minds and think more about art, literature, language, and society.

You can also see the importance of beer in the Code of Urukagina (named for the king of ancient Sumer in the third millennium BCE) which is widely regarded as the world’s first written legal code. This code even used beer as a central unit of payment and penance, making it one of the most important commodities of early civilization.

What these scientists and archaeologists are finding is that the human universal of drinking beer and telling your friends you love them was probably the reason why early humans decided to make love and not war. A trait which continues to this day, and hopefully for millennia to come.

So the next time you pour a cold one for your friends, think back to the early days of civilization and thank those long lost brewers. Because without them and that beautiful thing we call beer, the world we inhabit today might be a very different place.

Beer… bringing us together since 10,000BC.

Cheers.