News: Beer and Civilization (again)

My number one candidate for the spread of Indo-European languages is in the
news again.
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from the The Daily Telegraph
Stone Age sweet tooth led to beer's invention
By Roger Highfield and David Derbyshire
(Filed: 14/09/2002)

A Stone Age sweet tooth rather than a hunger for grain may have driven the
agricultural revolution behind the rise of civilisation and led to the
invention of beer, according to archaeological evidence presented yesterday.
Few topics from prehistoric times have led to as much argument and resulted
in so few satisfying answers as the attempt to explain why hunter gatherers
began to farm.
Rather than making bread or gruel from grain, the first farmers in the Near
East and the Levant were inspired by the discovery that slightly sprouted
grain (malt) tasted sweeter, Merryn Dineley of Manchester University told the
meeting.
Malt sugar is an alternative to honey, rich in B-vitamins, and can be eaten
in a variety of ways. Added to milk, it makes a delicious and nutritious
malted milk drink. Today, we call it Horlicks.
Once it became easy to produce the malt sugars, they could then have been
fermented into an ale or beer.
The story begins around 10,000 years ago, when the processing and deliberate
cultivation of grain began in the Near East and Levant, now occupied by
Israel, Lebanon, Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq.
Wild barley and wheat grew naturally and in abundance within the area known
as the Fertile Crescent in the Tigris and Euphrates river valleys.
At first, the wild grains were gathered by the nomadic population. Later the
grain was deliberately planted and grown.
People started to live in villages and the process of plant domestication
began. The domestication of sheep, goats and cattle soon followed. People
became farmers.
There is evidence of malting from the ninth millennium BC onwards, "thus
making malting one of the earliest food processing activities", Ms Dineley
said.