What Was The First Beverage?

[@eons]

EDIT: It's live! Go get our scientifically accurate, articulated mammoth models here: complexly.info/mammoths If you're catching this video early, our mammoth backerkit hasn't launched yet but it will be available in a matter of minutes! If you go here and follow the project, you'll get a notification when it's ready! complexly.info/mammoths

[@HopeRock425]

Could Broth be the oldest beverage since it's just soup with removed ingredients. Also I was very surprised that fermented wheat drink (beer) is older then leaves in water (tea) or squished fruit (juice).

[@Jean-yn6ef]

You don’t need pottery for milk consumption. Current peoples still use animal stomachs to make fermented milk keffir.

[@theblackhand6485]

Hello? Yemen is not, not Saudi Arabia!!

[@AokiZeto]

ofcourse the french dude is named vigne xD

[@Tutorp]

You forgot one important and very old beverage, guys... Mead. It's not only very old, it's a contender for "the oldest", more than likely older than wine, and quite possibly older than beer as well.

[@darthcheney7447]

Workers building the Pyramids of Giza were paid in beer and I believe the very first documented labor strike happened during the building of Kufu's pyramid when certain workers went on strike because their supervisor was stealing their daily beer supply. The workers won that strike btw.

[@57thorns]

It is worth nothing though that modern beer with fairly high alcohol and water content is prettyu far from the slightly fermented gruel that was beer in those day. That beer was more or less liquid bread.

[@NexuJin]

@@57thorns A glass of Guinness these days also equal a liquid bread.

[@Just_a-guy]

Have you any source for this. It sounds interesting and I would like to read more

[@darthcheney7447]

@@Just_a-guy I saw a Doc sometime ago starring Dr. Zahi Hawas, the head of Egyptian Antiquities. He discovered a tomb of the leader of the strike and the entire event was carved on the inside of his tomb along with his biography. He was drafted at 16 to work on the pyramid and he was elected boss after winning the strike and would go on to work on the pyramid for the 25 years it took to build the pyramid.

[@Just_a-guy]

@@darthcheney7447 thx, that's plenty enough to find it

[@underwaterdream2870]

Fun fact: in Polish (and propably other Slavic languages) the word "piwo" (beer) means literally "something to drink" (but in archaic way).

[@klas666]

Confirmed for East Slavic languages. I'd rather say "something drinkable", but it's a nitpick, of course

[@TheSaneHatter]

"Something to drinketh"?

[@sergeygolubovich1838]

Or maybe simply "a drink". So "pit' pivo"= to drink a drink(beer)

[@klas666]

@@sergeygolubovich1838 we were trying to convey the etymology for non-speakers

[@sergeygolubovich1838]

@@underwaterdream2870 Yea pivo comes the PIE root for drink or to drink

[@JoeJaJoeJoe]

3:49 I'm not neglecting my oral health, I'm creating future archaeological records 😂

[@thunderflare59]

Just make sure you aren't cremated.

[@ccorvid]

omg.....

[@_maxgray]

I really appreciated that you took the time to note that all of this is based on the currently known archaeological record - and that record has known biases due to a variety of causes. Well done, Eons team!

[@LePedant]

Fun fact: The world's oldest known math mistake has to do with Barley. It was made by a Sumerian named Kushim, they were in charge of storing the Barley. While counting the barley they made a multiplication mistake.

[@Kittyclysm]

Or he embezzled it

[@robdiesel1579]

There's a video I've watched where there is a theory that the mistake might be the first evidence of someone "cooking the books." Edit: I believe that Kushim might also be one of if not the oldest known written name.

[@outistynnanyt5153]

"Don't worry about making mistakes, no one will remember in the long run" *Kushim, 3k Years ago* : "well, you _say_ that..."

[@Internalview44]

Milk is a protein source for ancient humans ok

[@raulbeienheimer]

Fascinating, thank you for sharing it

[@youremakingprogress144]

I've heard that turning grain into beer was also an effective way to use the grain before it got moldy (or eaten by mice) and turn it into something with caloric value that could be stored longer.

[@fairygrove3928]

It also makes sense because grinding grains was really time and energy intensive. Fermenting them does not take as much time/energy, and you still get a lot of calories out of it.

[@SergePavlovsky]

beer was disinfected water. it was safer to drink, than just water

[@SergePavlovsky]

@@fairygrove3928 it doesn't make any sense. fermenting doesn't increase calories. you can just soak grains in water and eat porridge

[@fairygrove3928]

@@SergePavlovsky Fermenting can make food more easily digestible, converting it to a form that your body and more easily convert to energy. Sprouting grains does also work to turn the grains into food. I'm not certain why it doesn't seem to have been utilized much in ancient times--maybe the propensity for it to spoil, especially with often unsanitary water?

[@SergePavlovsky]

@@fairygrove3928 porridge is easily digestible enough

[@arazyr]

Beer can actually have a practical purpose. I wrote a paper in college about beer consumption in middle ages Germany, and something I found was that beer actually provided a lot of people a lot of the calories they needed to survive. That, and as mentioned in the video, the alcohol can kill bacteria in the water, making it safe to drink. So, beer isn't JUST a funtimes drink. 8^)

[@NexuJin]

Beer probably also made some marriages tolerable and allowed them to do the deed to establish a blood line.

[@julianshepherd2038]

You can eat barley for calories

[@LimeyLassen]

Fermentation is definitely one of the secrets to people surviving long winters

[@Althexia]

You don't have to look to the middle ages, this is still how beer is used in Germany. 😂

[@ezgarrth4555]

It is actually the process of brewing, which involves heat, rather than the alcohol, which renders the drink safe. Fermentation doesn't produce enough alcohol to kill many harmful bacteria.

[@micahbush5397]

And the two paths ultimately converged to form nature's most perfect drink, the malted milkshake.

[@DBT1007]

Nonalcoholic 😎👍

[@r.d.whitaker5787]

It's worth noting that beer was invented before the wheel 🍻

[@lyrimetacurl0]

What about mead?

[@WouldbeSage]

In fact, we almost definitely invented the wheel to cart around the beer.

[@BurtonGuster57]

The first person to have first tried beer must have had a blast. One after another just to make sure it’s edible.

[@ichise9984]

The wheel was invented to transport more beer

[@scaper8]

And the first wheels weren't even for transport. They were for milling grain. To make breads, yes, but both beer and bread are older than wheeled carts.

[@hopsiepike]

The first milk consumed was likely mostly fermented, as it was the only way to store it without refrigeration. Fermentation has always been a critical way to preserve food of all kinds - vegetables, dairy, fish, soybeans, along with the grapes and grain mentioned here.

[@AuntyKsTarot]

Or they only took what they needed.

[@AuntyKsTarot]

@@vermiform that’s a very 21st century response lol. You’ve clearly never lived on the land. Luckily trained archeologists can think outside the box more than you.

[@_kaleido]

@@vermiform wouldn’t the babies they had to produce that milk in the first place drink it?

[@AroundTheBlockAgain]

This! I was almost sure they'd mention a fermented product like a yogurt drink, not just "milk".

[@randomstuff6355]

Ngl, im still missing Steve. It was always comforting to hear the "and Steve" at the end

[@revinaque1342]

Same! I hope he's doing okay, wherever he is

[@deepakganesan9327]

He'll never realize how many people he's reached lol

[@pyroknave]

O7 Steve, may your big jib ever draw...

[@chickadeestevenson5440]

we all miss Steve. Hope he's okay.

[@Agentad03]

I miss Steve too and wish him well!

[@crusherbmx]

I had an anthropology professor in the early 90's who had a convincing argument that grains were first domesticated for beer, not food.

[@jaykpjohnson]

To add another to the list, mead (made from honey) is one of the oldest beverages we know of-- I think the earliest archaeological evidence to date is from ~ 9,000 years ago in China

[@broccanmacronain457]

I was thinking of that as well.

[@KalGamJack]

​@@Jul-66 What's your reasoning behind this? Merriam-Webster and Cambridge dictionaries define a beverage as "a drinkable liquid" or "a drink of any type." Wiktionary breaks down the etymology, "From Middle English beverage, from Old French beverage, variant of bevrage, from beivre (“to drink”), variant of boivre (“to drink”), from Latin bibō." Then further defined as, "A liquid to consume; a drink, such as tea, coffee, liquor, beer, milk, juice, or soft drinks, usually excluding water." Looking further, "alcoholic beverage" is defined as well...

[@57thorns]

@@Jul-66 Woth nothing that there is not a single dictionary definition that supports your claim.

[@conorjohn490]

There are wet and dank by-products of brew processes which would be technically consumable but probably not be considered a beverage. I'm not sure that 'wort', which is the main liquid blend of water and grain prior to fermentation, would be considered a beverage.

[@maitfinley]

I had thought that milk and mead were the oldest beverages. Honey and Bees were instrumental in the beginning of agriculture

[@tauntingeveryone7208]

I honestly thought alcohol would be the oldest drink because I remember reading a paper back in 2018 stating that the genes for breaking down lactose were only 10,000 years old and the genes that assist the liver in breaking down alcohol more effectively were 12,000 years old. The hypothesis was that drinking started around the time of agriculture. Humans accidentally left their grains in their containers for too long and discovered that the grains turned into alcohol.

[@UberNatasha666]

Interesting, but I don't think it was by accident. We learn a lot from watching the natural world, and critters absolutely *love* to catch a buzz on all sorts of things 😂

[@hanifarroisimukhlis5989]

Fruits half-rotten can become accidentally fermented and produce alcohol. Sometimes a hungry moose eat apples on the ground, got drunk, and gone mad.

[@podtherod9304]

I think that’s rather simplistic. One of those “common-sense” kinda theories that doesn’t really hold up in light of archaeological evidence.

[@dylanadams1455]

It is now proposed by some scientists that beer was the reason the grain was planted in the first place. When we went agricultural our diets got worse and our days got longer - so for food reasons doesn't necessarily make as much sense as you would think.

[@DustyGus]

Even wild animals get drunk off old fruit. I think we probably vaguely understood fermentation but just got better at creating it on purpose because we had more food to mess around with

[@raphaelgarcia9576]

Drinking on the job… for the job. 😂

[@MJRnBRoxx]

Maybe it was alcohol-free ;)

[@ftnsbcsk8t]

Welcome to being Mexican lol

[@kristiannandaba4217]

Oldest shifty for sure

[@PierrievanZyl-bi3wz]

Thanks!

[@Metalkatt]

"Early humans couldn't do X." Archaeologist: Sure looks like X to me. Also, beer can he VERY practical. If it's low alcohol content, it can provide hydration, electrolytes, and calories all at once. Handy if in a hot climate.

[@thewolfden3873]

beer and ail were the common drink and its supper easy to make at home. hell ive started to do it to avoid luxury taxes

[@RealBelisariusCawl]

I always call it “liquid bread”

[@jessicadeines]

Minor point but worth a shout out, thank you all for including closed caption in these!

[@DeAthWaGer]

"Near beer" which was less alcoholic and made from remnants of the initial brew in some cultures, and was also safer to drink than local water.

[@neiloflongbeck5705]

Also known as small beer.

[@thewelfaregourmet]

"Mead" can occur naturally, and fermented fruit liquid also can. Both are much easier to make than beer. I watched another one of these videos and they gave the win to them above over beer or milk.

[@fowlerj111]

I do wonder about broths and stocks. I wouldn't be surprised if cooking by boiling developed fairly early, and drinking the broth would provide nutrients (I'm thinking like calcium) as well as hydration. It wouldn't require agriculture or large groups of people working together, just fire and a container, like a skin or leather, a stomach, or even basketry. I might look up what evidence archaeologists might have found for prehistoric boiling.

[@tsm688]

dairy is a lot better at calcium than plants. that's why it takes so much plants to produce a little milk

[@timpz]

​@@tsm688 that's not true, calcium absorption has been shown to be the same between milk and plants. Also several plants have the same or more calcium than milk per calorie. The reason why it takes a lot of plants to produce milk is because cows eat grass while humans throughout history have traditionally mostly eaten much nutrition-denser plants like roots, grains, vegetables, beans, fruits, nuts, seeds and berries depending on the region and climate.

[@marmar90000]

Someone else in the comments mentioned "herbal tea" --- Boiling water in a vessel and then throwing some leaves, barks, or fruit/berries in there for flavouring and/or medicine.

[@tsm688]

@@timpz Per-calorie -- not per-weight. And what kind of food is famous for being low-calorie? Now do the numbers. You have to wolf down FIVE heads of lettuce to get the same calcium as half a cup of milk. Beans are a bit better, but still many times more beans than milk.

[@maryelizabeth6797]

At what point did they get fire resistant pot. I also wonder about their use and consumption of rotting fruit. The mind wanders.

[@yanezadam]

Inside you, there are two beverages. 11:32

[@nathandrake2973]

Well, since mentioning, greetings from the country of Georgia! BIG subscriber here :)) Love you all!

[@apexnext]

My first knowledge of your country was those Olympic volleyball players that went by Geor and Gia! Now I know much more tho. 😊

[@nathandrake2973]

@@apexnext LOL I didn't even know about that volleyball thing and just Googled it right now :) I've learnt something new today :)

[@theduder2617]

Bar none one of the most valuable youtube channels in existence. When I want facts minus personal opinion/belief, this is the channel I load. One of only two channels whose content I will watch again and again. A channel minus any and all potential boredom. For me anyhow. In fact, I am about to revisit 5 year old content. Whoever makes the decisions with this channel, I offer my sincere thank you in all regards. From the hosts to the covered topics, THANK YOU FOR THE EFFORT!

[@joshuahillerup4290]

Another thing I think this debate shows is that agriculture in some form at least is *way* older than people thought

[@abebuckingham8198]

Everything is older than we think because most events aren't recorded or discovered. All our data has future bias.

[@57thorns]

Rather that our ancestors (partially) domesticated animals long before we domsticated plants. And to me agriculture is the domstication and growing of plants. What is interesting here is that with beer the demand for grain increased to a degree where it became necessary to grow and breed it.

[@joshuahillerup4290]

@@57thorns I do think that plant domestication started a lot earlier too

[@podtherod9304]

@@joshuahillerup4290agreed. Hunter-gatherers seasonally return to the same lands. They must have noticed similar plants growing in similar areas year after year, and that harvesting them and eating those plants had some effect on this. I think it’s very likely people were intentionally harvesting and planting particular plants to return to seasonally for thousands of years before what we think of as “agriculture” developed.

[@oscarmedina1303]

Yes. Agriculture began as the ice sheets receded at the end of the ice age.

[@davidhaag02]

Why isn't Mead mentioned? It has some of the oldest concrete evidence and compared to milk and bear doesn't need any domestication.

[@JetstreamGW]

I mean, I don't really think wide-spread mead production based on wild-harvested honey would be particularly feasible. That seems to be something where beekeepers would be useful.

[@AlexanderWeixelbaumer]

Bears certainly need domestication...

[@JetstreamGW]

@@AlexanderWeixelbaumer You feel free to try that. I'mma stand way the hell over there.

[@Mike-kw5xv]

@@JetstreamGW It actually has some of the best evidence for the beverage because unlike other items where humans have to get involved in the process (even fermented fruit needs to be stored or squeezed) nature will occasionally make mead on it's own. We were likely drinking mead long before we had any technical knowledge. How wide spread it was... well, anywhere bees exist.

[@pattheplanter]

@@JetstreamGW Wild honey is gathered wherever there are humans and honey bees nearby. I would guess that some crushed honeycomb in water was a very early drink. Just to sepaarate any lumpy bits of bark and wood from the edges of the hive.

[@AmandaTroutman]

Humans be like: Hold my beer...

[@Alusnovalotus]

for the last 10,000 yrs.

[@ecurewitz]

Keep my beer. It’s yucky

[@michaelmcfarland1716]

​@@ecurewitzmost be bud.

[@ecurewitz]

@@michaelmcfarland1716 it’s all beer. I’ve tried several kinds. Didn’t like any of them

[@michaelmcfarland1716]

Yeah. Usually go for foreign made. Better than the American brands.

[@vaszgul736]

If your video editors are reading this: small animation nitpick here. The way the timeline being pushed back is portrayed doesn't immediately make it obvious that that's what the animation is conveying. The previous oldest timeline for something is suddenly missing and a new one suddenly appears somewhere else. I had to rewind because I swore the oldest appearance of wine already appeared only for it to appear again but now the first one was missing. Very confusing. I recommend animating the actual marker on the timeline sliding from the previous position to the new one. That way it's clear you're setting up the "old information" then pushing it back with the addition of new information. Otherwise it just seems like markers are skipping around on the timeline. Thought I was losing it 😅

[@LightBlueVans]

i thought it was beer but the whole “it might not be what you think it is” started to make me second guess

[@scaper8]

Pretty much the same thoughts. I hadn't considered milk, but as soon as they mentioned cattle, I immediately went there, too. It's fun to think that milk and beer are probably the old non-water drinks we had.

[@KelsomaticPDX]

The drawbacks of being well educated 😅

[@DiMaggio82]

Same

[@chickadeestevenson5440]

My brain went right to Water. But I'm gonna watch it now.

[@usernamesta3334]

@@chickadeestevenson5440water is not a beverage mate

[@KristenNicoleYT]

Folks who love this video should look up "the history of world in six glasses" or something like that. I had to read it in high school and it was really interesting

[@NavyDood21]

I have absolutely 0 training or have done any research, but my first thought when I saw the title was something like an "herbal tea"

[@AuntieDawnsKitchen]

Or mead. You just mix the honey you raided from that beehive with some water in a gourd and the yeast will ferment it. Probably wouldn’t leave traces though.

[@tsm688]

tea is actually a superstition. they thought tea leaves purified the water. turns out its just the boiling

[@Phlebas]

I just made a similar comment before seeing yours, but that would still be my best bet (speaking as an archaeologist). Many foraging cultures (like 100% of humanity for the vast majority of our existence), can heat water in organic containers made of bark or hide, and will put plant bits in there for flavour or for their medicinal properties. The problem is that it's very hard to find evidence for that sort of thing in the archaeological record. You need the right sort of conditions for these containers to preserve over tens of thousands of years, and even if they did, it would be very hard to do any sort of residue analysis on them.

[@huehuecoyotl2]

Or meat broth

[@frankibianchi6188]

@@Phlebas Speaking as an anti-archaeologist, how do you sleep at night? After lying about dinosaurs all day and scaring the chilluns? Ridiculous.

[@lilac_hem]

not me reading the title and being like ".. probably water, right?" lmao

[@lizardmilk]

What about Mayan chocolate drink or Polynesian coconut water?

[@abebuckingham8198]

Cocoa drinks seem to have started around 500 BCE while coconuts were domesticated around 3000 BCE during the Austronesian expansion. So they seem to have come much later than dairy or beer.

[@mjm3091]

The issue with Polynesian and American cultures is that a lot of them arrived pretty late compared to some of the earliest African and West Asian cultures. Paleo-Indians came around the time, it is speculated beer could become a thing, as that's the earliest any cereal was farmed around 10k (that we know of). Coconuts were also domesticated few hundred years after the documented chemical proof of earliest barley beer (3500-3100 vs 3000-1500).

[@keithfaulkner6319]

Disregarding how long people have been in the Western hemisphere, the Mayans as a culture go back only a few thousand years.

[@Jul-66]

That would be a very interesting topic for an episode (if it isn't already). Chocolatl made it all the way up to the American Four Corners region.

[@Ezullof]

There was likely a maize-based fermented drink long before chocolate.

[@samiamrg7]

I think I’ve heard about this: Is it beer? After figuring out how to make bread from wild yeast, we stumbled into making beer from malted “cereal” that may have been left out awent bad, or got wet inside a storage container and fermented. The beer was actually pretty important, since it has a quite long shelf life and still contains quite a few calories, making it a useful storage medium for grain as “liquid bread.”

[@Brian-----]

4:42 Beer is very practical. It’s liquid bread.

[@galactuskev]

You're entirely right. Some ancient cultures literally thought of it that way

[@Abdega]

“🥷’S CALL ME THE DRINK!”

[@culwin]

0:10 who has bananas for Thanksgiving

[@frankibianchi6188]

Whats a banamna

[@enriquehartmann8642]

Well, I'm Hispanic , (half Cuban half Venezuelan , born in Ohio lol ). Along with the turkey, cranberry sauce, and mashed potatoes, we'll have fried plantains, which are a type of banana.

[@Andy_Babb]

Grateful bonobos?

[@Andy_Babb]

@@frankibianchi6188I think you might be dyslexic lol don’t feel bad, I ma oto

[@Ohmygatos35]

In the south we make banana pudding for dessert for most occasions. But your right, straight up bananas at the table. Nope

[@archionblu]

Extra shout out for John Davidson Ng. "Steve" was fun to say, but John has longevity. Thank you for making Eons possible!

[@HiggsBoson42]

While beer and milk have the oldest archeological evidence, I think the oldest beverage is likely either blood or leave water, basically herbal tea but it could be not brewed at elevated temperature. Our ancestors have hunting for a very long time, at least 1 millions years, and I highly doubt that all of them would ignored blood as a food source. Its salty after all and salt is hard to come by in a hunter-gather life. I think they would it use more in cooking, like most cultures today do, but I imagine they might occasionally drink it raw or diluted with some water. Our ancestors also have been eating leaves for a very long time. If you have a tasty leaf and a way to store water, its likely someone, perhaps child, might put some of leaves in it, and sometimes you would get flavored water. Most herbs and spices that people use toady have chemicals that slow bacterial growth. This could help prevent infections if you have an organic water storage, like a animal stomach, and groups that did this would collectively have an advantage over groups that didn't do this.

[@amandswright2040]

Otzi had some medicinal herbs in his belongings, he likely brewed herbal teas

[@amandado6519]

You need to have pottery to be able to boil water and make tea; most hunter-gatherers lack pottery. And I suppose blood doesn't count because early hunter-gatherers weren't going out of their way to get blood from animals for the purpose of drinking, it was just something that was consumed opportunistically.

[@hecate235]

@@amandado6519 You can make a frame to hold animal skin and drop in rocks heated by a fire to heat, even boil water. Or if you're skilled, make waterproof baskets. Make teas, soups, stews, use boiling to prep various vegetables. Our ancestors were more ingenious than we think.

[@Phlebas]

I'm glad she mentioned that these findings have a bit of a bias. In this case, we're talking about beverages from pastoral or agricultural cultures, which are somewhat recent developments given how long people have been around. But here's the thing: hunter-gatherers also make beverages, and we've been hunting and gathering for the vast majority of our history. In my neck of the woods, up in northern British Columbia, people drink Labrador tea (also known as muskeg tea up here); essentially, a tisane made of a plant that grows all throughout northern Canada. It's used in traditional medicine (I can say from experience that it's a diuretic and a laxative, if you have need of that sort of thing), though some people also just drink it because it tastes nice - I'd say it's kind of like green tea - though everyone who knows about it will warn you not to drink too much (again, it's a diuretic and a laxative). Indigenous people in my area, until and a little after European contact, were nomadic big game hunters and drinking Lab tea pre-dates contact. They had no ceramics and there's no tradition of ground stone bowls or pots, but any clever person can make containers for boiling water out of organic material: birch bark and animal hides work pretty well and their use has been documented across many different foraging cultures. It's not a stretch to think that people have been putting bits of plants into water, heating it up, and drinking it for as long as they've figured out how to heat water, and considering that we have evidence for intentional use of fire for cooking from 780,000 years ago, I would not be at all surprised if the first beverage goes back a few hundreds of thousands of years. The problem is that while you might be able to do residue analysis on a piece of pottery from 13,000 years ago, you're very unlikely to have an organic container that a) preserved for that long, and b) if it did, is in any sort of condition where residue analysis is possible.

[@earthknight60]

So... does broth or soup count as a 'beverage'. What about those made from plants, especially fruits and flowers? This is kind of important as the early beers were not all that much different from fermented grain soups. If we look at it from that perspective 'beverages' likely go back much, much earlier. And let's not leave out meads, which even going by a limited definition of beverages predate beers.

[@abebuckingham8198]

Any liquid used for consumption is a beverage so that would include broth. Meads do not predate beer at all and aren't even close to being in the running. We didn't even start eating honey before beer.

[@howleysend4219]

I recall an article by Dr. Reichholf, a german professor for evolutionary biology stating that beer came before the invention of bread. This video rings a bell. Makes sense too. Beer drinkers will approve.

[@BrettWMcCoy]

Asian steppe nomads decided to combine early beverages into a single drink, like kumis or airag

[@karikling6751]

I was going to say they drink fermented horse milk in Kazakhstan, but you beat me to it.

[@BrettWMcCoy]

@@karikling6751 Yep, a lot of folks in central Asia drink that!

[@Polikaize]

*Airan

[@BrettWMcCoy]

@@Polikaize Isn't ayran/airan a yogurt drink, similar to doogh or kefir (all with slightly different methods for making and/or fermenting)

[@danielamarasinghe9631]

Incredible that PBS felt it was necessary to clarify they were referring to Georgia the country, not the state

[@skae81]

I know that’s silly, I live in Georgia and I know it’s not a country. 😂 😂

[@AshenDruid]

1:15 Well, water cut with alcohol, but mostly water nonetheless. Beer wouldnt show up until right around the time we started doing agriculture. Same with wine, since you need a lot of grapes to make much. Before that it wouldve been mead (really strange how you guys ignored that one completely) or something made from fermented fruit. Considering our ancestors definitely consumed fermented fruits long before homo sapiens came along I find it really difficult to believe someone somewhere along the line didn't come up with the idea of mashing that fruit up, or using them to flavor water with. Most of human history makes a lot more sense when you factor in that we've been drunk as a species until pretty recently.

[@Ezullof]

You're absolutely right, and additionally - the distinction we make between beverage and solid food is very arbitrary and modern. Our beverages are almost all as liquid as water, but it wasn't the case historically. I mentioned kykeon in another comment, but let's think about the difference between a stewed fruit and applesauce. It's almost certain that our ancestors consumed "liquid food" that was half eaten, half drunk, and likely fermented. It was safer than stagnant water, and also we didn't evolve to be addicted to sugar and alcohol for no reason. We were fermented fruit addicts.

[@KodeeDentares]

"Beverage Archeologist" the idea amuses me:)

[@alexiswoodberry9119]

Damn that mammoth figure looks really cool but I can't really afford 200 dollars for something like that :(

[@Moosyfate]

Also worth remembering that milk ferments into alcoholic beverages, too

[@Ezullof]

There's a point when it gets hard to differentiate between a beverage and liquid food. Even in historical times, you get things like kykeon, which even had cheese in it. Similarly, don't think of ancient beer as a golden liquid like we have today. There's was "matter" inside it. We know that humans, and potentially older hominids, eat/drank ferment fruit, millions of years ago. Does that count as "beverage"? How do we determinate that?

[@tsm688]

by whether they made it or not. "ugh this fruit is rotten" "eat it anyway" vs "if we don't store these fruits just right they might not ferment correctly"

[@elizabethjones4066]

Thank you! The way this is presented is somewhat misleading.

[@amanda6876]

Answering questions I never thought to ask. Thanks

[@someguy-k2h]

Water, milk, blood, milk mixed with blood, plants steeped in hot water.

You're just naming things people drink. Why?

[@fanfuntherapy6866]

My guess would have been coconut milk/water. Surely this would have been consumed in SE Asia, Australia and the Pacific during early human settlement

[@amandado6519]

I suppose because a beverage requires human processing. (Milk needs domesticated animals.) Blood and coconut water don't count for this reason, they aren't prepared.

[@anotherfreakingaccount]

it's 100% herbal tea

[@herbertfawcett7213]

Did the researchers check for lactose tolerance? Because cheese is edible even with intolerance to lactose! Cheese would leave the milk residues on teeth also!

[@doredam8919]

As far as we know the first people with lactase persistence (lactose tolerance) were the Yamnaya who came from the Pontic-Caspian steppes. It is likely that they fermented their milk products for a long time before then to lower the lactose levels, but as lactose intolerant people today show: comfort is different for different people, and maybe drinking milk was worth it for some

[@stephanieyee9784]

I am lactose intolerant. I use Lacteeze Tablets if I'm using normal milk or eating ice cream. As far as cheese goes, the general rule is that aged cheeses are OK to eat as they've been fermented. Ditto sour cream. I can't have a whole lot of cream cheese, which is the worst. It's a lot of trial and error for lactose intolerant people, but at least we now have access to the Lactase Enzyme, which helps with digesting milk and its byproducts.

[@stephanieyee9784]

​@doredam8919 , that was probably horses milk, not cows' milk. Eurasian steppe people herded, hunted, domesticated, rode, milked and ate horses for thousands of years before cows, goats and sheep arrived on their radar.

[@Jul-66]

I've wanted to see an episode about lactase persistence evolution since forever. it is such a weird trait for a mammal.

[@doredam8919]

@@stephanieyee9784 milk is milk though. They all contain lactose

[@parcajon]

Am I alone in finding the disclaimer about biases and incomplete information extremely refreshing? I feel like up until now, archeological findings have always been presented with too much confidence. I hope this represents a newfound humility going forward.

[@ComradeTerra]

Well, our species breastfed before we developed agriculture. So if that counts then milk is absolutely the first non-water beverage.

[@marcbelisle5685]

An incredible book on this subject is: "A History of the World in 6 Glasses" by Tom Standage.

[@moiatashi]

2:00 appreciate the disclaimer :)

[@bauhnguefyische667]

We should go with a calendar dating system based on BB and AB. Before Beer and After Beer. After beer has the advantage of not remembering last night😂

[@nicklindberg90]

CERVESA CRISTAAAAAAL!

[@Chris_winthers]

If cervesa cristal sponsored 2001: a space odyssey

[@Bunke09]

Cervesa Cusqueña! I drank both 25 years ago when I was in Peru!

[@portillamail]

CERVEZA. WITH Z

[@nicklindberg90]

@@portillamail😒

[@wouter.de.ruiter]

@@portillamail CERVEJA! everyone in Portugal knows it's spelled with a J! never mind the silly Spaniards!

[@Strunmahmah]

This is really interesting. But just because we had the lactase gene and milk herds doesn't mean we were *drinking* milk. They could have been turning the milk into cheese or yogurt because both of those increase the shelf life of the milk

[@the-chillian]

The story about coffee helping its drinkers stay awake during religious ceremonies wasn't from Yemen, it was from Ethiopia, where the plant was said to have been discovered. But this wasn't the roasted seeds of the coffee berry we now know; it was kind of tea made from the raw berries. It was indeed in the southern part of the Arabian peninsula that a coffee closer to what we now know was invented, made from roasted, ground seeds. And that style is still made today, variously called Turkish coffee, Greek coffee, Armenian coffee, Arabic coffee, etc.

[@Eueueyw]

No, the first religious usage and the first time it was brewed into a drink was in Yemen. Sufis used it.

[@marysue9661]

Hey, just wanted to say thank you for keeping me sane

[@Boris_Chang]

No that we have that out of the way, what was the first appetizer? The first soup?

[@clearsmashdrop5829]

I had unsweet ice tea with dinner tonite and then poured myself a small glass of Kirkland Margarita. Just like Otzi used to do.

[@grantalexander5812]

Primordial soup?

[@keithfaulkner6319]

Someone should market that.

[@freddiepitts7611]

My body hasn't mastered drinking? Well I better keep practising!

[@MrARock001]

I object to characterizing beer as "impractical". It's basically liquid bread!

[@_mycotroph]

I love that 5500 years ago people were pouring one out for the homies

[@miket7215]

Beer doesn't purify water. Heating the mash to a boil does.

[@noradrenalin8062]

The alocohol in beer is enough to kill an array of germs.

[@artemisknight8721]

Alcohol content does kill/reduce bacteria. The exact language may be off but it does reduce harmful infections.

[@sopernovashrez]

Watching this episode with a cup of my favourite beverage, tea. Thanks Eons for brewing this cup with archaeology :)

[@iancanada6875]

You forgot about blood. Many cultures like the Maasai and Mongolians traditionally bleed their animals without killing them and drink the blood. It's not inconceivable that hunter gatherers would have been drinking the blood pooled inside of a fresh kill thousands if not millions of years before animal or grain domestication.

[@amandado6519]

I suppose because it's only consumed opportunistically and early hunter-gatherers weren't going out of their way to get just the blood from animals?

[@iancanada6875]

@@amandado6519 so? How does that discount it?

[@TheMegaGag2]

PBS Eons is top tier content.

[@olmostgudinaf8100]

Don't worry about funnels and funerals. I once confused dormitory and cemetery.

[@manixter]

at 3:09: BEER ITS BEEER!!!!

[@jdiddy069]

just goes to show beer sets us free

[@anotherfreakingaccount]

It's herbal tea

[@firesidesage3611]

0:44 ayooo, this looks like the best grape soda ever. So clear and light

[@shawnlooney3886]

I thought that mead was in the running as well for oldest beverage...no?

[@abebuckingham8198]

Beer predates our consumption of honey by a couple thousand years. So I doubt mead is in the running.

[@57thorns]

@@abebuckingham8198 Why wouldn't hunter-gathereräs go after the yellow sweet goodness? I found claims (not substantiated or further researched by me) that dates honey back at least 10000 years.

[@spartan1121]

Yeah it appears that there is some dispute between beer and Meade being first so I'm surprised it wasn't mentioned at all in the video.

[@shawnlooney3886]

Google AI says mead was first, so it must be true :)

[@57thorns]

@@shawnlooney3886 lol

[@ncg195]

One minor quibble: Beer was absolutely just as practical a drink as milk in the days before easy access to clean water. The alcohol in beer actually sterilized it and greatly reduced the risk of illness compared to drinking straight out of the local river.

[@LughTheSavior]

I’d guess stews/broths and some type of steeped leaves were the first aside from water

[@57thorns]

Yes, herbal infusions ("teas") make more sense. Depends on how far from water you need to go before it becomes a beverage. Is water with a slice of lemon a beverage? If you squeeze the lemon into the glass? If you heat it up with lemon juice and honey?

[@thexanderthemander]

Yup. This is how they would discover beer. First they would make their grain and water drink, it accidentally ferments, then they start to do it on purpose. No way did people just invent beer without some intermediary drink.

[@tsm688]

@@57thorns why leaves?

[@lakinworley5685]

Mums milk

[@_lime.]

It's quite possible that mead is older than beer. Mainly because mead can be naturally made. So it's possible it was actually around before humans.

[@ruyfernandez]

Do milk proteins in dental plaque actually prove mesopotamians drank milk? They could also have eaten cheese without drinking milk, since cheese is easier to digest.

[@11macedonian]

Making cheese requires that milking animals is already part of the culture and that milk is likely drank.

[@ruyfernandez]

@@11macedonian actually, I have heard some archeologist say that it is possible that cheese was consumed earlier than milk, given that the capacity to digest milk as adults became widespread more recently than the earliest traces of diary products.

[@Bubble-Foam]

@@ruyfernandez But wouldn’t that have required people to try drinking the milk first only to have a reason to prefer cheese that contains less lactose? I’m sure that cheese was a staple before milk could be a reliable one, however.

[@ruyfernandez]

@@Bubble-Foam maybe. But even if they tried, at first, it probably just gave them a stomach ache. Still, that counts as drinking milk, I suppose.

[@anotherfreakingaccount]

@@ruyfernandez technically all milk is digested into cheese. Your stomach turns milk into a sort of loose farmer's cheese

[@brianwalker8465]

Mead predates even beer. Pre-agriculture, honey was a valuable resource, and it was common to wash the last bit of honey off of a comb by dunking it in a bucket of water. If not consumed immediately, that sweetened water could naturally ferment in as little as a few hours. Remember, this is still hunter-gatherer stage of history, where large amounts of fruit or grain would be incredibly hard to get. As time went on and agriculture developed, grains and fruits became more common, and started being used to stretch the amount of honey needed to create alcoholic drinks (braggots made from honey and grain, and I think it is called metheglin when you mix fruit with the honey). Eventually we reached the point where the honey was too expensive or hard to get compared to fruit and grain, and you end up with proper beer and wine. Interesting to note, in many languages the root words for honey, alcohol, and medicine are all closely related

[@57thorns]

On the other hand I have seen claims using diet soda versus sugary soda where the total caloric intake was the same. On that experiment people that had just been exercising were given food and drinks, and the people that got the sugary drinks did actually eat less. It is possible that this discrepancy is due to the difference of drinking sugary drink with solid food (so it all ends up in the stomach at the same time) compared to drinking sugary drinks between meals.

[@windhelmguard5295]

interesting fact: in Germany beer served from the cask at restaurants, fairs, concerts and similar events has fewer calories than bottles beer you'd get at a store, specifically to make sure people will buy more food.

[@WampusWrangler]

I'm imagining two humans 20,000 years ago like, "Grog what are you doing with that, thats not water!" "Chilll haha I'm in my beverage era 🤪"

[@DomyTheMad420]

i really wish stories like this START with the reminder that this ancient "beer" was: - chunky as heck, more a stew then a liquid. - about 1-2% alcohol. at best. makes those tales of "and they got paid in LITERS" make a lot more sense 😆

[@doredam8919]

Honestly the best term I've seen people describe ancient beer as is 'liquid bread'. Which essentially it was, which also made it more nutritious! Harder to get drunk though

[@anubis2814]

Beer is full of calories, Its weird that you would say its opposite of practical. It is the twin sibling of bread as fermentation of one can be used to make the other in olden times.

[@Redneckkratos]

Since we are talking about prehistoric drink; let’s all raise a frosty cold one in toast to Steve 🍻🍻🍻 hope the man who supported us all is doing well wherever he is

[@Cypresssina]

Cheers Steve

[@dugldoo]

No mention is made of drinking blood as a beverage in prehistoric times. A number of herding cultures have been noted to do so in historic times and I suspect this practice goes back thousands of years.

[@bornanagaming3329]

Lean, closely followed by Mug Root Beer are the first beverages invented by mankid.

[@stephanieyee9784]

What is lean? Did you mean mead?

[@bbirda1287]

How about the alcohol tolerance gene? I heard that not all animals can tolerate alcohol (except cool ones like dogs and horses and cats). My understanding was that it comes from eating nearly rotten fruit where the sugar has started to turn into alcohol.

[@Brian-----]

5:12 Having 40% of Mesopotamian grain go to beer isn’t too surprising. The Russian Empire declared war on Austria-Hungary in 1914 and then shot itself in the foot by imposing prohibition on itself as a war measure, massively shrinking tax revenues and also massively disrupting internal grain trade flows which no longer could go to legitimate distilling (plus some brewing). Three years later, it was “Peace Bread Land” and the second was for a reason.

[@DroneBeeStrike]

Beer IS practical. It sterilizes your water and preserves your grain, and thus its calories. Beer is pretty much liquid bread. Thats why you can make beer from bread or bread from beer.

[@trout512]

Well, finding out that drinks make you feel less full compared to solids with the same calories is kind of a trip. It at least partially explains why when I'm having a bad autism sensory day, smoothies and other liquids are easier to force down. On days when everything is overwhelming, feeling full just means you feel sick :(

[@DandandanTelevison]

Getting full off jellybeans is def the weirdest thing I’ve heard today.

[@TragoudistrosMPH]

4:11 Please do Lactase Persistence as an episode! It's a fascinating set of genetic mutations, since milk is not healthy for every adult. I'll request on patreon again :) 8:13 Most people in that region don't have one of the 3 lactase persistence mutation 🤔 Notice how a scientist from a highly lactose tolerant region expects people in a region with low lactase persistence to frequently be milk drinkers. 10:36 so close to covering this topic! 😅 😁

[@A1-ultra]

Actually the whole point for why there was evolutionary pressure to develop lactose tolerance is that milk IS healthy for all adults. The problem is lactose intolerance makes it very unpleasant.

[@graemehirstwood670]

As a brewer that grew up in Scottish Dairy country - I claim a win either way!

[@ctcboater]

I had the impression that most water was contaminated, and thus beer was consumed to avoid gastric distress. Milk may have been consumed by children, but the ability of adults to digest it is a recent (and regional) phenomenon.

[@balaenopteramusculus]

Recent as in 20,000 years, apparently.

[@felonyx5123]

Beer was safer than water in some times and places, but water wasn't always dangerous. The Victorian-era cholera epidemics in cities were a fairly recent and very memorable example of that and probably contribute to people thinking the same was true in other periods. But in places where people did have safe water beer was still a practical way to get in more calories while doing hard labor all day, and a way to preserve grain.

[@ryanchavers4388]

All I learned was, we have found some old drinks, but I have no idea what the first drink was😮

[@TheOreoChild]

Purposely fermented fruit/ wine. People love to get wasted.

[@boothbytcd6011]

Beer was a huge source of calories, and also was a way to preserve grain.