Genuine question: how does it make sense that both bread and alcohol fermentation were invented before the domestication of any grain? Were people making bread (and beer!) with gathered seeds?

▲

etiennefd 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

Yes, there are archeological remains of bread made from wild wheat and barley by hunter-gatherers in Jordan. It makes sense when you think about it, domestication would have happened only if the wild plant was useful, and if the plant was useful then it's likely people experimented with various ways of using it (like baking)

▲

dmurray 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Wine is much easier than beer, because ripe fruit will ferment on it's own. Even wild animals get drunk sometimes; it's sometimes said that wine was discovered but beer was invented.

So alcohol without any grain is easy, but I don't know the answer for beer. On the other hand, why would you domesticate grain unless you already knew you could turn it into beer or bread?

	▲	Qwertious 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		Grain can be turned into porridge (so basically just soaked) and eaten, bread and beer is optional. In fact, IIRC classical-era armies would eat their grain as porridge instead of spending hours in camp baking it into bread. For obvious reasons.