Image copyright DANI NADEL/AFP/Getty Image caption Archaeologists were looking for evidence of plant foods when they discovered the alcohol traces

Researchers say they have found the world's oldest brewery, with residue of 13,000-year-old beer, in a prehistoric cave near Haifa in Israel.

The discovery was made while they were studying a burial site for semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers.

Brewing beer was thought to go back 5,000 years, but the latest discovery may turn beer history on its head.

The findings also suggest beer was not necessarily a side product of making bread as previously thought.

The researchers say they cannot tell which came first, and in October's issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, they suggest the beer was brewed for ritual feasts to honour the dead.

"This accounts for the oldest record of man-made alcohol in the world," Li Liu, a Stanford University professor who led the research team, told Stanford News.

Ms Liu said they were looking for clues into what plant foods the Natufian people - who lived between the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods - were eating, and during the search they discovered the traces of a wheat-and-barley-based alcohol.

The traces analysed were found in stone mortars - up to 60cm (24in) deep - carved into the cave floor, used for storing, pounding and cooking different species of plants, including oats, legumes and bast fibres, such as flax.

Image copyright DANI NADEL/AFP Image caption Bedrock mortars were found at Raqefet cave in the Carmel Mountains, northern Israel

The ancient brew, which was more porridge or gruel-like, is thought to have looked quite unlike what we know as beer today.

The research team has managed to recreate the ancient brew to compare it with the residue they found.

This involved first germinating the grain to produce malt, then heating the mash and fermenting it with wild yeast, the study said.

The ancient booze was fermented but probably weaker than modern beer.</s>Researchers from the U.S. and Israel have found evidence of the world’s oldest beer-making in an Israeli cave.

Scientists studied three 13,000-year-old stone mortars uncovered in the Raqefet Cave near what is now the Israeli city of Haifa. Residues confirmed that the mortars were used for brewing of wheat and barley, as well as for food storage.

Experts from Stanford University and the University of Haifa participated in the research. “This accounts for the oldest record of man-made alcohol in the world,” said Li Liu, a professor of Chinese archaeology at Stanford, in a statement.

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The cave formed part of a prehistoric graveyard used by the Natufian people, providing a clue to beer’s role in their culture. Experts believe that the Natufians brewed beer as part of ritual feasts that honored the dead. “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,” said Liu.

The research, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, notes that the earliest bread remains discovered were recently uncovered from a Natufian site in Jordan. The bread remains could be between 11,600 and 14,600 years old, according to Liu, who says that beer findings could be from 11,700 to 13,700 years ago.

The Natufians likely used a three-stage brewing process that first turned the starch of wheat or barley into starch. The malt would then be mashed or heated and then left to ferment with airborne wild yeast.

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Prehistoric beer, however, was quite unlike our modern brews, according to Jiajing Wang, a doctoral student at Stanford and co-author of the study. The Natufian brew was most likely a “multi-ingredient concoction like porridge or thin gruel,” the research says.

The prehistoric brewery is the latest fascinating archaeological find in Israel. Earlier this year, an international team of researchers announced the discovery of the earliest modern human fossil outside of Africa at Misliya Cave on Mt. Carmel in northern Israel. Dated between 175,000 and 200,000 years ago, the jawbone indicates that modern humans left the continent of Africa at least 50,000 years earlier than previously thought.

In 2015, researchers also found a partial human skull in a cave in Northern Israel dating from around 55,000 years ago. The fossil remains have been linked to migration of humans from Africa to Europe.</s>Archaeologists working in Israel have uncovered what they think is the world's oldest brewery, which may have been producing booze as far back as 13,700 years ago. Anyone who enjoys a tipple owes these people a lot.

The new find pre-dates evidence of previous beer-making by several thousand years – this could mean human beings were cooking up alcohol much earlier than we thought.

Not only that, but the researchers think this could be evidence that the domestication of some cereals (meaning efforts to purposefully cultivate crops) may have been prompted by the need to keep the beer flowing – at least in certain parts of the world.

"This accounts for the oldest record of [human]-made alcohol in the world," says one of the team, Li Liu from Stanford University in California.

"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."

You probably wouldn't want a taste of this beer though, irrespective of how long it's been hanging around: 13,000 years ago it was most probably more like porridge or gruel, according to the archaeologists. It was probably weaker than today's beer too.

Investigating residues taken from a cave near what is now Haifa in Israel, used by the ancient Natufian people as a graveyard, the researchers found evidence of starch and phytolith plant particles – both linked to the transformation of wheat and barley into beer.

To test their hypothesis, the team ran a series of experiments to mimic the way the ancient Natufian people were thought to have brewed beer: turning wheat or barley into malt, mashing and heating the malt, then fermenting it with airborne wild yeast.

A careful study of starch granules in the lab through this process suggests this was indeed a place where beer was brewed and drunk, possibly to mark Natufian funerals. Even 13,000 years ago, the funeral wake was still a tradition.

"Beer making was an integral part of rituals and feasting, a social regulatory mechanism in hierarchical societies," says one of the team, Jiajing Wang from Stanford University.

Besides their lab tests, the researchers also found evidence of grain seeds being pounded and crushed on stone mortars recovered from the site, which also backs up the hypothesis that beer was being brewed here.

And given the close connection between culture, celebration, and a shared fondness for alcohol, every discovery like this tells us a little bit more about the beer drinkers as well as the beer itself.

"If we're right, this is the earliest testament in the world to alcohol production of any kind," one of the archaeologists, Dani Nadel from the University of Haifa in Israel, told AFP.

The research has been published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.</s>A joint study conducted by researchers at the Stanford University and the University of Haifa has discovered the evidence of the world's oldest beer-making facility. The discovery was made in an Israeli cave and experts believe that this brewing plant is at least 13,000-years-old.

During the research, the study team discovered stone mortars in the Raqefet Cave which is very near to the Israeli city of Haifa. Upon closer analysis, researchers confirmed that the mortars were used to brew wheat and barley. In the ancient times, these mortars were also used for saving food grains.

Experts believe that beer production in the ancient ages was actually a part of rituals. Natufian people who lived across these regions used to make beer as part of ritual feasts that honoured the dead.

"This accounts for the oldest record of man-made alcohol in the world. 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," said Li Liu, a researcher at the Stanford University in a recently issued statement.

The research report, published in the Journal of 'Archaeological Science: Reports' has revealed that the Natufian people used a three-stage brewing process while making beer. In the initial phase, the Natufian people turned the starch of wheat or barley into starch. Later, they heated the malt and would be left to ferment with airborne yeast.

"We did not set out to find alcohol in the stone mortars, but just wanted to investigate what plant foods people may have consumed because very little data was available in the archaeological record," added Liu.

However, the researchers revealed that the beer in the ancient days was very difficult when compared to the beverage humans taste now. Jiajing Wang, a doctoral student at Stanford University reveals that the beer brewed by Natufian people was ''multi-ingredient concoction like porridge or thin gruel.''</s>Archaeologists have unearthed what they believe is the world's oldest site for alcohol production.

The ancient drinking hole is located in the Raqefet cave, south of Haifa in modern-day northern Israel – a site that also served as a burial for the Natufian people.

Evidence suggests that thousands of years ago, this group of hunter-gatherers in the eastern Mediterranean were fond of drinking beer during celebrations.

Archaeologists believe a weak, beer-like beverage was served in ceremonies starting 13,000 years ago.

HOW DID THE NATUFIAN PEOPLE MAKE BEER? The hunter-gatherers of the Natufian Culture, which flourished in modern-day Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria between 14,500 and 11,500 years ago, were some of the first people to build permanent homes and tend to crops. Evidence suggests that thousands of years ago this group of hunter-gatherers in the eastern Mediterranean were quite the beer connoisseurs. Scientists believe that the Natufians used a three-stage brewing process. First, starch of wheat or barley would be turned into malt. This happens by germinating the grains in water to then be drained, dried and stored. Then, the malt would be mashed and heated. Finally, it would be left to ferment with airborne wild yeast.

'If we're right, this is the earliest testament in the world to alcohol production of any kind,' Dani Nadel, an archaeology professor at the University of Haifa told AFP.

'We know what the Natufians did in the cave. They buried some of their dead on a platform of flowers and plants, and apparently also produced a soup-like liquid, an alcoholic drink.'

According to Dr Nadel, the liquid was 'different than today's beer' and probably much weaker, 'but fermented'.

They discovered three small pits, or mortars, that had been carved into the surface of the Raqefet cave, according to the paper published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.

Two of the small stone mortars were for storing grains, while a third was used for pounding and brewing grains ahead of fermentation, the study found.

The mortars were some 40-60 centimetres (one-two foot) deep.

The location of the mortars in the burial caves implies the drink was 'apparently connected to the ceremonies, or some sort of social event,' Dr Nadel said.

According to the paper, published with researchers from Stanford University, the beer-making innovations 'predated the appearance of domesticated cereals by several millennia in the Near East.'

'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,' said one of the lead researchers Li Liu, a professor of Chinese archaeology at Stanford.

The earliest bread remains to date were also recently recovered from the Natufian site in east Jordan.

Those could be from 11,600 to 14,600 years old. The beer finding reported in the latest paper could be from 11,700 to 13,700 years old.

Ancient beer is far from what we drink today.

It was most likely a multi-ingredient concoction like porridge or thin gruel, said Jiajing Wang, a doctoral student in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures and a co-author on the paper.

Researchers unearthed residual remains of starch and microscopic plant particles known as phytolith, which are typical in the transformation of wheat and barley to alcoholic drinks.

They believe that the Natufians used a three-stage brewing process.

First, starch of wheat or barley would be turned into malt. This happens by germinating the grains in water to then be drained, dried and stored.

Then, the malt would be mashed and heated. Finally, it would be left to ferment with airborne wild yeast.

The hunter-gatherers of the Natufian Culture, which flourished in modern-day Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria between 14,500 and 11,500 years ago, were some of the first people to build permanent homes and tend to crops.

These innovations were crucial for the subsequent emergence of agriculture during the Neolithic era.

Previous research had suggested the centre of this culture was the Mount Carmel and Galilee region, and that it spread from here to other parts of the region.

However, more recent research has challenged this 'core region' theory, with excavations uncovering a well-preserved Natufian site, where they uncovered a large collection of charred plant remains.

They were 'the last in the region who lived in a different way than the villages we're familiar with,' Dr Nadel said.

The efforts put into producing the alcoholic beverage showed the importance of the drink in the Natufian culture, he noted.</s>BOSTON: Prehistoric humans had a thirst for craft beer and were brewing such beverages at least 5,000 years earlier than thought, say scientists who have found evidence of alcohol production in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Archaeologists from the Stanford University in the US and University of Haifa in Israel analysed three stone mortars from a 13,000-year old Natufian burial cave site in Israel.

Their analysis confirmed that these mortars were used for brewing of wheat/barley, as well as for food storage.

The study, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, suggests that beer brewing practices existed in the Eastern Mediterranean over five millennia before the earliest known evidence, discovered in northern China.

"Alcohol making and food storage were among the major technological innovations that eventually led to the development of civilisations in the world, and archaeological science is a powerful means to help reveal their origins and decode their contents," said Li Liu, from Stanford University.

The earliest archaeological evidence for cereal-based beer brewing even before the advent of agriculture comes from the Natufians, semi-sedentary, foraging people, living in the Eastern Mediterranean between the Paleolithic and the Neolithic periods, following the last Ice Age.

The Natufians at Raqefet Cave collected locally available plants, stored malted seeds, and made beer as a part of their rituals.

"The Natufian remains in Raqefet Cave never stop surprising us," said Dani Nadel, from the University of Haifa, who was also an excavator of the site.

"We exposed a Natufian burial area with about 30 individuals; a wealth of small finds such as flint tools, animal bones and ground stone implements, and about 100 stone mortars and cupmarks," said Nadel.

"Some of the skeletons are well-preserved and provided direct dates and even human DNA, and we have evidence for flower burials and wakes by the graves," he said.

"And now, with the production of beer, the Raqefet Cave remains provide a very vivid and colourful picture of Natufian lifeways, their technological capabilities and inventions," he said.

The Natufians exploited at least seven plant types associated with the mortars, including wheat or barley, oat, legumes and bast fibres, researchers said.

They packed plant-foods in fibre-made containers and stored them in boulder mortars.

They used bedrock mortars for pounding and cooking plant-foods, and for brewing wheat/barley-based beer, likely served in ritual feasts 13,000 years ago.

The evidence of beer brewing at Raqefet Cave 13,000 years ago provides yet another example of the complex Natufian social and ritual realms.

Beer brewing may have been, at least in part, an underlying motivation to cultivate cereals in the southern Levant, supporting the beer hypothesis proposed by archaeologists more than 60 years ago.</s>OCCUPIED AL-QUDS: Archaeologists have found what they believe is the world´s oldest site for alcohol production, a study said on Thursday, adding the beer-like beverage may have been served in ceremonies some 13,000 years ago.

The site is located in the Raqefet cave south of Haifa in today´s northern Israel that also served as a burial site for the Natufian people. "If we´re right, this is the earliest testament in the world to alcohol production of any kind," Dani Nadel, an archaeology professor at the University of Haifa and one of the authors of the article published in the "Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports", told AFP.

"We know what the Natufians did in the cave. They buried some of their dead on a platform of flowers and plants, and apparently also produced a soup-like liquid, an alcoholic drink." According to Nadel, the liquid was "different than today´s beer" and probably much weaker, "but fermented".

Three small pits, or mortars, were discovered that had been carved into the surface of the Raqefet cave. Two of the small stone mortars were for storing grains, and the third for pounding and brewing grains ahead of fermentation, the study found.

The mortars were some 40-60 centimetres deep. The location of the mortars in the burial caves implies the drink was "apparently connected to the ceremonies, or some sort of social event," Nadel said.

According to the article, published with researchers from Stanford University in the United States, the beer-making innovations "predated the appearance of domesticated cereals by several millennia in the Near East."

The Natufians were hunter-gatherers who lived in the eastern Mediterranean region 15,000 to 11,500 years ago, and began settling down rather than roving from place to place. They were "the last in the region who lived in a different way than the villages we´re familiar with," Nadel said. The efforts put into producing the alcoholic beverage showed the importance of the drink in the Natufian culture, he noted.</s>This could be the oldest brewery in kegs-istence.

Researchers say they’ve discovered the earliest evidence of man-made alcohol at a bygone brewery in a prehistoric graveyard cave in Israel, where they found residue from what could be 13,000-year-old beer, according to findings published in October’s Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.

The researchers analyzed residue from three stone mortars found in the Raqefet Cave, a burial site for semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers called Natufians, according to Stanford University.

Archeologists think the ancient beer was likely “a multi-ingredient concoction like porridge or thin gruel.”

The beer found could be anywhere from 11,700 to 13,700 years old. Archeologists suspect Natufians brewed it for ritual feasts to honor the dead.

“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,” said Li Liu, a Stanford archeology professor who led the team that made the discovery.

Some of the same researchers previously unearthed remains of a 5,000-year-old brewery in China.</s>Both bread and beer are staples of many people’s diets, but if you could only choose one, which would you pick? If you went with beer, no need to feel embarrassed: Turns out beer might have been the whole reason humans started cultivating grains to begin with.

Unlike wine, which is simply fermented grape juice, the production of beer is a more involved process, making its origins especially mysterious. One theory has always been that, somewhat similar to wine coming from grapes, beer might have spawned from bread. But new research from Stanford University may support an existing but unproven counter-theory: Beer production might actually predate bread.

A team led by Li Liu, a professor of Chinese archaeology, analyzed residues from 13,000-year-old stone mortars found in the Raqefet Cave in what is now Israel. After finding what Stanford News described as “evidence of an extensive beer-brewing operation,” the researchers now believe that the native “semi-sedentary” hunter-gathers from that time, the Natufians, might have been the world’s first brewers. “This accounts for the oldest record of man-made alcohol in the world,” Liu stated.

Liu notes that though these findings may change the timeline on when beer was first brewed, it doesn’t definitively answer the question of which came first, beer or bread. The Natufians are also apparently behind the world’s oldest bread, with remains found in what is now Jordan dated as being between 11,600 to 14,600 years old. Meanwhile, the recent beer evidence is likely from somewhere in the range of 11,700 to 13,700 years old. So plenty of overlap still exists.

But as their research paper states, “It has long been speculated that the thirst for beer may have been the stimulus behind cereal domestication, which led to a major social-technological change in human history; but this hypothesis has been highly controversial.” With the earliest evidence of brewing now pushed further back than ever before, one thing is for certain: Liu’s findings definitely don’t discredit that theory. Maybe humans didn’t settle down to make bread; maybe they were just looking for a good spot to open a brewery?</s>Stanford researchers have found the oldest archaeological evidence of beer brewing, a discovery that supports the hypothesis that in some regions, beer may have been an underlying motivation to cultivate cereals.Stanford University archaeologists are turning the history of beer on its head.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: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.Evidence suggests that thousands of years ago, the Natufian people, a group of hunter-gatherers in the eastern Mediterranean, were quite the beer connoisseurs.Liu and her research team"This accounts for the oldest record of man-made alcohol in the world," Liu said.The researchers believe that the Natufians brewed beer for ritual feasts that venerated the dead.Liu said about their findings.In her lab analysis, Liu said she was surprised to discover evidence of beer brewing in the residue samples they gathered."We did not set out to find alcohol in the stone mortars, but just wanted to investigate what plant foods people may have consumed because very little data was available in the archaeological record," said Liu, who is the Sir Robert Ho Tung Professor in Chinese Archaeology at Stanford's School of Humanities and Sciences Ancient beer is far from what we drink today., said Jiajing Wang, a doctoral student in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures and a co-author on the paper. Wang has helped Liu research ancient alcohol since 2015 when they first looked at 5,000-year-old brews in China before turning their attention to studying the Natufian culture.In the Raqefet Cave, Liu and Wang unearthed residual remains of starch and microscopic plant particles known as phytolith, which are typical in the transformation of wheat and barley to booze.The researchers believe that the NatufiansFirst, starch of wheat or barley would be turned into malt. This happens by germinating the grains in water to then be drained, dried and stored. Then, the malt would be mashed and heated. Finally, it would be left to ferment with airborne wild yeast.All of these steps provided clues to help the researchers make their claim.To test their hypothesis, the researchers conducted a series of experiments to recreate each step the Natufians would have taken to brew their beer.These brewing experiments allowed the researchers to study how starch granules changed during the brewing process and make comparisons to what they discovered.Liu and Wang's brewing experiments showed a clear similarity to what the Natufians concocted.The researchers also analyzed the artifacts that were excavated. They found thatof pounding and crushing grain seeds, a process required for beer brewing.The discovery of ancient brewing shed new light on Natufian rituals and demonstrate the wide range of technological innovations and social organization within their culture, the authors conclude in the paper."Beer making was an integral," Wang said about their findings.And those rituals were important to the Natufian culture, she said, noting that the discovery of beer-brewing at the graveyard signifies the emotional ties the hunter-gathers had with their ancestors.
Researchers with Stanford University report the discovery of the oldest known evidence of beer. Dating to approximately 11,000 BCE, the primitive brewery was located near modern Haifa, Israel.