Beer in the news; Beer Lubricated the Rise of Civilization, study suggests

From Live Science

Beer Lubricated the Rise of Civilization, Study Suggests

May beer have helped lead to the rise of civilization? It's a possibility, some archaeologists say.

Their argument is that Stone Age farmers were domesticating cereals not so much to fill their stomachs but to lighten their heads, by turning the grains into beer. That has been their take for more than 50 years, and now one archaeologist says the evidence is getting stronger.

Signs that people went to great lengths to obtain grains despite the hard work needed to make them edible, plus the knowledge that feasts were important community-building gatherings, support the idea that cereal grains were being turned into beer, said archaeologist Brian Hayden at Simon Fraser University in Canada.

When Kridz and I went on our Easterly Trip a couple years ago, while at the Victory Brewing Company, the tour guide asked something like "how long have people been brewing?" My response was "since the dawn of civilization".

This story isn't really new NEWS to beer-ophyles, but it might be for people who don't spend much of their day thinking about beer (and not just thinking about what to have as their next beer).