History
The oldest evidence of a fermented cereal drink
Residues in stone mortars at Raqefet Cave in Israel, roughly thirteen thousand years old, consistent with malting and fermenting wild wheat or barley.
-11000 · also called Raqefet Cave, oldest beer, Natufian beer, 13000 year old beer
The version you have probably heard
“Beer was invented in Mesopotamia around 4000 BC.”
Fermented cereal drinks are far older than Mesopotamian civilisation and older than agriculture itself. They also have no single origin: wet grain ferments on its own wherever cereal is stored, so this will have happened independently many times. What Mesopotamia has is the oldest *written* record, which is a different claim from the oldest beer.
The mortars were found at a Natufian burial site in the Carmel mountains, and the starch and phytolith residues in them are consistent with the transformation of grain into a fermented beverage. The context suggests funeral feasting rather than everyday production.
What makes the finding significant is the date: it precedes domesticated cereals in the Near East by several millennia, so this is people processing wild grain. It has been used to revive the argument that a taste for fermented drink helped drive the adoption of farming, which remains speculative.
Why it matters
The earliest physical evidence anyone has produced for deliberate brewing, and it predates agriculture — which reframes beer as older than farming rather than as a product of it.
How well this is established
| Certainty | Well attested. Broadly agreed across sources, though the precise dating or detail may vary between them. |
|---|---|
| When | -11000. Known to the year rather than to the day. |
Evidence
What BeerHQ knows about this, and how. Every statement carries the state of the evidence behind it rather than being presented flatly as fact.
Starch and phytolith residues in stone mortars at Raqefet Cave in Israel, dated to around thirteen thousand years ago, are consistent with the malting and fermenting of wheat or barley, and predate domesticated cereals in the region by several millennia.
Backed by a source
Source: Liu et al., "Fermented beverage and food storage in 13,000 y-old stone mortars at Raqefet Cave, Israel" (2018), abstract and reported findings (JAS: Reports 21, 783–793)
Either side of this
-1800: The Hymn to Ninkasi is written down →
See the whole sequence on the beer history timeline.
Last reviewed 2026-08-16.