All right, as we stock up for Super Bowl Sunday, I want you to remember this. Before football, or flat TVs, before wings and nachos, no, wait, in fact, before cities or money or even written language, human beings are already making beer. Not wine, not whiskey, beer. Honestly, beer just might be older than civilization itself.

And some historians even believe its discovery just may have been an accident.

I'm Patty Steele, the prehistoric roots of cracking open a cold one.

That's next on the backstory.

This is an I-Heart podcast, guaranteed human.

The backstory is back.

All right, as you lean back to watch the Patriots and the Seahawks face off on Super Bowl Sunday,

there's a pretty good chance you're going to toss back a frosty beer or two

to wash down those hot wings or bean dip. Beer is actually still the number one alcoholic

beverage of choice worldwide. But hey, where did it originate? Anthropologists say beer

maybe older than civilization itself, and some think it's the reason civilization began in the first place.

Like the song says,

You want to be where everybody knows your name.

So, beer it is.

Gotta go back around 13,000 years

to when humans were transitioning from nomadic life to life on a farm. Of course,

one of the first things they grew was grain, barley, and wheat. Because it grew easily and was

fairly easy to store, except when it wasn't. Our early ancestors had one problem. When grain got

wet and sat in the sun, it fermented. The mixture bubbled and smelled

strange. It had like a thin oatmeal consistency, and weirdly, people decided to dig in. And then,

something unexpected happened. They felt relaxed, social, and really, really happy. It was like a party in a

jug, but you do have to wonder what made them taste it. Anyway, beer wasn't invented. It was

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