Interesting read Byrd, being an avid beer drinker myself i can understand the importance of Beer in ancient civilisations , both socially and politically. It makes sense that Beer and Civilisation go hand in hand, after discovering how to make beer and enjoying it's effects our ancestors would have immediately decided that to continue to enjoy beer they would have to settle down and farm the grains to keep producing it. Therefore BEER is the reason why we are civilised !!

Havent they also discovered wheat and barley seeds in the Çatalhöyük dig, which would pre-date Sumer if it was found that they were brewing beer in that settlement, but those seeds could also have only been used in the production of bread. I understand it's difficult to prove if they were brewing though as the ingrediants used would not last and a large grouping of vats and kilns would be needed to prove that they were brewing.

I also found some other little interesting tid bits on ancient Beers and brewing.

Sam Calagione of the Dogfish Head brewery in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, used a recipe that included rice, honey, and grape and hawthorn fruits. He got the formula from archaeologists who derived it from the residues of pottery jars found in the late Stone Age village of Jiahu in northern China.

It was here in 1898 that the British Egyptologist J.E. Quibell discovered a series of bee-hive shaped granaries, traces of which still survive. The granaries, in conjunction with the evidence for large-scale burning (from firing or cooking) on the mound and my discovery of the brewery, suggest that the entire area was a large industrial zone for processing agricultural produce. The brewery at HK24A is one of the oldest-known beer production sites in Egypt, and its large vats were capable of brewing several hundred gallons of beer a day.

A weighted average of archaeologically reliable radiocarbon dates from the vat site (Hk24A) of 4719 ± 34 C-14 years bp calibrates to a date of between 3,500?3,400 BC, corresponding to Naqada IIa-b), making them the oldest breweries known in the world

The giant wide-mouthed urns are a perfect size for boiling and serving corn beer, or chicha, while the large jars are ideal for fermenting the brew.

The bones, the researchers say, contain traces of the antibiotic tetracycline. Today tetracycline is used to treat ailments ranging from acne flare-ups to urinary-tract infections. But the antibiotic only came into commercial use half a century ago. So how did tetracycline get into the Nubian bones?
Armelagos and his team say they found an answer in ancient beer. The brew was made from grain contaminated with the bacteria streptomycedes, which produces tetracycline.

Armelagos said the Egyptians used beer as a gum-disease treatment, a dressing for wounds, and even an anal fumigant—a vaporborne pesticide to treat diseases of the anus. The anthropologist also believes the tetracycline protected the Nubians from bone infections, as all the bones he examined are infection free

Originally posted by Byrd
Here's a fascinating article about Sumer (one of the earliest Middle East civilizations (yes, I know they say the first but that's still debated by archaeologists and historians)

and in the Middle Ages in Europe almost everybody had beer and/or beer soup for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Coffee comes next. That and the Age of Reason. Standage, along with other authorities that I have read credit coffee with sobering up Europe and ushering in rapid social, scientific, technological, and social change. Instead of beer for breakfast, now it was off to the coffeehouse and talk of trade, science and revolution. Coffee was safer than water because the water was boiled to make the coffee.

I cant wait to explain to my wife that if it wasnt for Brewers she would not be able to enjoy her chocolates.

People have been enjoying chocolate for more than 3,000 years—about 500 years earlier than previously believed, according to a new study.
Researchers also think that chocolate was discovered by accident—when Central American Indians making beer from the pulp of cacao seedpods found a new use for a byproduct of that process.

dur [FART] wr. dur2 "to fart" Akk. şarātu

Another boozy story i just came across.

The two archaeologists were scheduled to excavate a nearby grassy mound known as a fulacht fiadh (pronounced "full-oct fee-ah"). About 5,000 of the mounds have been discovered throughout Ireland, most dating from 1500 to 500 BC. They're not much to look at — excavation reveals a rectangular trough (fulacht is Gaelic for "recess") surrounded by a horseshoe-shaped arrangement of burnt stones. No one's certain what they were used for, but in a flash of insight, Quinn proposed a hypothesis in keeping with his nation's cerevisaphilic reputation: The Bronze Age relics might just be Ireland's first breweries.