September 15, 2018 | 8:34pm
This could be the oldest brewery in kegs-istence.
Researchers say they’ve discovered the earliest evidence of man-made alcohol at a bygone brewery in a prehistoric graveyard cave in Israel, where they found residue from what could be 13,000-year-old beer, according to findings published in October’s Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.
The researchers analyzed residue from three stone mortars found in the Raqefet Cave, a burial site for semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers called Natufians, according to Stanford University.
Archeologists think the ancient beer was likely “a multi-ingredient concoction like porridge or thin gruel.”
The beer found could be anywhere from 11,700 to 13,700 years old. Archeologists suspect Natufians brewed it for ritual feasts to honor the dead.
“This discovery indicates that making alcohol was not necessarily a result of agricultural surplus production, but it was developed for ritual purposes and spiritual needs, at least to some extent, prior to agriculture,” said Li Liu, a Stanford archeology professor who led the team that made the discovery.
Some of the same researchers previously unearthed remains of a 5,000-year-old brewery in China.
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