According to anthropologist and beer enthusiast Thomas W. Kavanagh, mid 20th century academia posed an interesting question regarding the origins of agriculture and the domestication of grain. In 1952, anthropologist, Robert Braidwood of the University of Chicago and Jonathan D. Sauer, professor of botany at the University of Wisconsin began a symposium moderated by the eminent journal, American Anthropologist as to which came first; bread or beer. The query of the symposium created a minor stir in the anthropological community and even today the question may seem surprising to social scientists who have never broached the subject. It is an accepted verity that wild cereal grains had been cultivated by civilizations in the Middle East at least as early as 5000 BC, but it had always been assumed that the use of those grains was for the preparation of flour to make bread. Upon closer examination, however, recovered archaeological samples of ancient cereal grains such as wheat, rye, and barley indicated preparation methods perhaps more in line with the process of brewing than of baking. Furthermore, the shards of stone tools and pottery vessels retrieved along with the grain specimens contained chemical evidence that they were likely used in the purveyance of the sipped rather than the chewy products of those plants.

Although which came first; the growler or the loaf has yet to be definitively decided, it looks now as if the brewing of beer is the world’s oldest manufacturing enterprise. There is evidence of a brisk beer trade in China 5000 years ago and professional women brewmasters ran the business in Mesopotamia 4000 years ago.  Beer was a sacramental beverage in ancient