An Ancient Elixir: Beer in Sumer

Abstract

Alcoholic beverages have had an extensive impact on the earliest human societies. Scholars have argued that the desire to reap the health and social benefits associated with alcohol was a precursor to the Neolithic revolution and led individuals to abandon a nomadic lifestyle and develop agrarian economies. Fermented beverages developed convergently across the world at similar timeframe. In these societies’ alcohol played an important role in the business, social, and spiritual worlds. This article aims to look at the importance and the role that beer played in ancient Sumer. In addition, this article looks at the geography of beer; as it maintains its importance and spreads to Babylon, Assyria, and Egypt following its genesis in Sumer. Today beer remains one of the most widely consumed beverages in the world, and there is a brewery located on every continent including Antarctica.