Beer Vs Bread : Civilisation War.

[noddy]

Over the years both beer and bread have been proposed as the cause of settled lifestyles and the first agrarian cultures.

the pendulum has swung back to my favoured theory, beer.

https://phys.org/news/2018-09-evidence- ... reals.html

A research team led by Li Liu, a professor of Chinese archaeology at Stanford, has found evidence of the earliest brewmasters to date, a finding that might stir an old debate: What came first, beer or bread?
In a cave in what is now Israel, the team found beer-brewing innovations that they believe predate the early appearance of cultivated cereals in the Near East by several millennia. Their findings, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, support a hypothesis proposed by archaeologists more than 60 years ago: Beer may have been a motivating factor for the original domestication of cereals in some areas.

It seems quite obvious to me, self evident perhaps, that a man living the unburdened life of a hunter gatherer with endless grilled meats would not give that up for a loaf of bread.

[Simple Minded]

One would think this would be part of documented history.

What about the relationship between alcohol and power, political or religious?

[Miss_Faucie_Fishtits]

I'll tell it from my perspective:

Beer is something that can happen, like oops,..... accident......

Bread is something you deliberately plan for. Therefore, beer happened before bread......'>......

[noddy]

good point, though sourdough is the oops of the bread world.

Its also likely that instead of either/or - it was both together that provided enough benefit to give up the nomadic lifestyle.