Getting together with others to socialize and knock back a beer or sip on a glass of wine is hardly a modern activity. In fact, humans have been making and drinking alcoholic beverages since ancient times. People consumed alcohol for a variety of reasons throughout history—as part of religious rituals, for social bonding, for medicinal purposes and simply to enjoy themselves. Below are some of the earliest known examples of humans making and consuming beer, sake, wine and liquor.
1. Beer, Israel 11,000 BC
The earliest evidence of man-made alcohol in the world was discovered at a burial site in Raqefet Cave near present-day Haifa, Israel, where Natufians—a group of hunter-gatherers in the eastern Mediterranean—were laid to rest. Researchers from Stanford University analyzed residues from 13,000-year-old stone mortars found in the cave, and recognized evidence of beer brewing.
In an article published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports in 2018, the authors hypothesize that the Natufians made beer for ritual feasts to venerate deceased members of their community.
“This discovery indicates that making alcohol was not necessarily a result of agricultural surplus production, but it was developed for ritual purposes and spiritual needs, at least to some extent, prior to agriculture,” Li Liu, a professor of Chinese archaeology at Stanford said in a statement.
But according to Stephen D. Batiuk, senior research associate and lecturer in the department of Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations and the Archaeology Centre at the University of Toronto, the Natufians’ version of beer is “nothing like what we drink today.” It was more like gruel or porridge than a refreshing beverage.
2. Rice Beer (Sake?), China, 7,000 BC
After conducting chemical analyses on residue found on early pottery from Jiahu, a Neolithic village in China’s Yellow River Valley, a team of researchers led by molecular archaeologist Patrick McGovern of the University of Pennsylvania, revealed that a mixed fermented beverage of rice, honey and fruit (hawthorn fruit and/or grape) was being produced as early as 7,000 B.C. As the team writes in a 2004 article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, their findings “provide direct evidence for fermented beverages in ancient Chinese culture, which were of considerable social, religious and medical significance.”
So, what exactly was this early form of alcohol? Because it contains honey, some have likened it to mead, while others see it more as a type of sake because it’s also made from rice. According to Batiuk, the beverage was made predominantly from hawthorne berries—one of the few berries that naturally grows yeast that ferments. But, he adds, it shouldn't be considered wine in the strictest sense.
“It’s best to consider this more as a grog—a witch's brew, if you wish,” he says, noting that it probably had quite a high alcohol content, and isn’t similar to anything we drink today. The beverage was used in a funerary context, Batiuk explains, “probably in the funerary rites, allowing those alive to commune with the spirits through their “altered state.’”
3. Wine, Georgia, 5,980 BC
Residue on large earthenware containers dating back to 5,980 B.C. excavated in two archeological sites near Tbilisi, Georgia, is the earliest evidence of traditional wine made from grapes, Batiuk says. The research team, led by McGovern, published their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2017. Evidence of the wine was found in domestic contexts at multiple sites associated with various social classes, “suggesting that it was fairly wide-spread in the society—a common beverage,” Batiuk explains, adding that it was made by “everyday farmers.”
A total of eight large pottery jars—likely used for fermentation, aging and storage of the wine—were found with the residue; some were decorated with pictures of grapes and men dancing, the BBC reports. The residue contained tartaric acid, which only occurs in significant amounts in the Eurasian grape (Vitis vinifera) in the Middle East, as well as the wine that’s made from it. It also contained malic, citric and succinic acids, which are found in the same type of grape.
4. Chicha, South America, 5,000 BC
Some of the earliest known pottery from the Andes region of South America dates back to around 5,000 B.C. and was likely used to carry and store chicha: a beverage primarily made from fermented corn, along with manioc, wild fruits, cacti and potatoes, according to McGovern. Corn was considered a sacred crop to the Incas and other civilizations of the period, and chicha was used as a type of currency.
“In late prehistory, huge local and state farms, the majority on steep, terraced hill slopes and irrigated plains of the deserts and valleys, were dedicated to the production of corn,” McGovern writes. The farming itself, he explains, was “largely powered by chicha”—with locals working the land in exchange for the beverage. Additionally, chicha was consumed in large quantities during and after the farming work, “making for a festive mood of singing, dancing, and joking,” he notes.
5. Distilled Liquor, Europe, 1400s-1600s
While naturally fermented alcohol like beer and wine have been around since ancient times, distilled liquor has only been around for a few hundred years. “Distillation is a really recent development—at least in the context of our relationship to alcohol,” says Edward Slingerland, a philosophy professor at the University of British Columbia and the author of Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization.
“We've known about distillation forever—Aristotle described it—and the principles of it have been well understood for a long time, but doing it on any kind of scale is really technologically difficult because you have to be able to keep the liquid at a very constant temperature.”
While there were small-scale attempts at the distillation of alcohol in Chinese, Indian, Greek and Egyptian societies, it wasn’t until Arab improvements in technology in the late-medieval period that spirits were more widely consumed. The invention of the printing press and movable type also played a large role in the spread of distillation. Prior to that, recipes and instructions were primarily confined to monasteries, medical schools and apothecaries.
Published in Germany in 1500, The Virtuous Art of Distillation by Hieronymus Brunschwig is considered the first major book about the process, and focuses on medicinal distillation. By the 1600s, the average person in Europe had access to distilled liquor like gin and rum—and it was a real game changer. “It makes alcohol much more dangerous,” Slingerland explains.
Alcoholic beverages created through natural fermentations, like beer and wine, can only get to a certain ABV [alcohol by volume], he explains. Distillation, on the other hand, doesn’t have that safety feature, and it’s possible to make liquor far more intoxicating with, say, a 90 percent ABV.
Distillation also made spirits a commodity. “Distilled liquors last for a really long time and can be transported, and so you get people turning their grain surplus into distilled liquors—and now they can trade it across long distances,” Slingerland says.
