Drinks

Beer

Citation Formats

General Reference

Food and Drink Atlas. "Beer." Accessed August 29, 2026. https://dev-food.interactiveatlas.org/drinks/beer.

APA Style

Food and Drink Atlas. (n.d.). Beer. Retrieved August 29, 2026, from https://dev-food.interactiveatlas.org/drinks/beer

BibTeX

@misc{foodanddrinkatlas-beer,
  author = {Food and Drink Atlas},
  title = {Beer},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://dev-food.interactiveatlas.org/drinks/beer},
  note = {Accessed August 29, 2026}
}

A fermented beverage brewed from a starch source, most often a cereal grain such as barley or wheat, malted and mashed to release fermentable sugar and then fermented with yeast. Clear written evidence of organized brewing comes from Sumerian Mesopotamia, including the Hymn to Ninkasi, a hymn to the Sumerian goddess of beer that also functions as a brewing record. Far older, more contested residue evidence from a Natufian site in the southern Levant has been read by some researchers as ritual beer brewing among hunter-gatherers many thousands of years before settled agriculture, a claim not universally accepted.

Facts

Disputed

Origin Period, From (Year)

from -11,000 1

Contested residue evidence from a Natufian hunter-gatherer site in the southern Levant has been read as very early beer brewing, well before the clear, undisputed written evidence of organized Sumerian brewing; the earlier end of this range reflects that contested claim, not a settled date.

Origin Period, To (Year)

to 3400 BCE 1

Contested residue evidence from a Natufian hunter-gatherer site in the southern Levant has been read as very early beer brewing, well before the clear, undisputed written evidence of organized Sumerian brewing; the later end of this range is the securely attested Sumerian textual record.

Origin Region

Mesopotamia (modern Iraq); contested residue evidence points further back to the Natufian southern Levant 2

Cross-Tradition Connections