Beer may be responsible for civilization.

Congratulations!

 

Honey IS made up of simple sugars and fermentable... But I don't think that it can naturally ferment on its own like fruits can.

A combination of honey's low moisture content, acidity, and the digestive enzymes from the bees that it contains mean that microbes really cannot live in it. I don't think that undiluted honey is really susceptible to yeast. Making mead you dilute the honey in water and water is crucial for yeast to perform the fermentation chemical reactions.

Honey is naturally protected in honeycombs and therefore won't naturally gain the moisture and access to yeast. If early humans had a pot of honey sitting around that got rainwater in it then that could have fermented.

But on the other hand. Fruits also contain a lot of simple sugars. They are much more exposed to the elements. And the fruit often has colonies of yeast living on their skins. All it takes for grapes, apples, or other berries to ferment is to crush them a little bit to let the skins break exposing the soft fleshy insides and waiting.

And then there are other plants. I think there's a cactus or some tree that it has been observed animals creating a hole in that fills up with sap and they then come back in a week or so and drink the sap which has fermented.

Early humans could have easily come across fermented sap like this I'd think.

But then again I think that gruel would have been an early source of food for hunter gatherers as well. They could easily gather a handful of wild grains to cook into porridge. The leftover porridge or gruel going through rain and then fermenting would be the source of wonder. It takes more grain to be able to produce an alcoholic beverage that would be harder to get through foraging. This could have led to the desire to start farming and producing grain for fermenting as well as eating.

But there is not really a way for us to know whether making beer assisted the creation of agriculture. But if someone can find evidence of fermenting grains through alcohol residue or something like that in the earliest settlements then it could be likely.

 

Such grain residues can be and have been found.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-beer-archaeologist-17016372/

But container residues might not solve the core problem since making a container that doesn't leak (or allow rapid evaporation of contents) requires a certain level of tecnnology and enough stable excess food supply to allow someone the time to make them and that may not have existed for most hunter-gatherers. Hence the need to also be able to remain in a wild game and wild grain rich area long enough to have a bit of time free from finding food.

 

Raw Honey also has bee parts, residual wax, minerals, trace protein and amino acids, gluconic acid, some disaccharides, and aromatics. The composition of all the above are what makes different honey varieties. There is a hell of a difference between orange blossom honey and Buckwheat honey (Pilsner to RIS in the beer world for a comparative example). Yes, the high sugar content low moisture level is what makes honey stable.

Above I was saying that it is not malt. I said mostly simple sugars for a reason, as there are other things in honey.

 

I really like this documentary and I really would like to see a movie depicting beer's affect on the world

 

Isn't there evidence that wine was invented before beer, though? I haven't researched the topic too deeply, but I have read before that the first evidence of beer is around 8,000 years old, whereas the first evidence of wine is something like 13,000 years old.

 

It was already mentioned in this thread that fruits like grapes left to spoil in the open would have been the first found natural alcohol.

 

Certainly possible, but I think that its more likely that beer came after the start of civilization. Fermentation and beer brewing are things that were most likely discovered by chance and accident when things were left sitting and later consumed out of necessity or curiosity. The circumstances for that to happen are much more likely to happen in a civilized society that has settled down in one location and less likely in a hunter gatherer society.

 

But foodstuffs were available for hunter gatherer societies. What encouraged them to decide to become stationary and start raising crops?

A person can find clumps of grasses to get enough grain for gruel. But it takes a larger supply to only keep the sugar extract to ferment into beer.

It could have been leftover gruel from a temporary campsite with rain during a hunting trip. After a little while foam is noticed on the surface. Then the ancient peoples realize they can make more of this great substance if they can grow their own grain.