Hey Giddy you ever seen the Tigris-Euphrates Rivers? They don't call that area of the woeld the cradle of civilization for nothing. In fact, it's where beer was born.
We claimed we knew before the war where all the WMD was. We claimed Saddam could give the order and by the time forty five minutes had passed, the WMD would be flying all over the place. We send 1400 people to find stuff that we claim to know where it is and after more than a year of searching we find two shells, both being misused as IED explosives. This is in spite of the fact we enabled our interrogators to torture anyone under Rumsfeld's rules - and they still could not get someone to talk?
Actually, there is strong evidence that beer was born in Egypt around the time the pyramids were built. The speculation is that the Pharaohs used beer to keep the peons happy while they toiled.
Between 10,000 and 15,000 years ago, some humans discontinued their nomadic hunting and gathering and settled down to farm. Grain was the first domesticated crop that started that farming process. The oldest proven records of brewing are about 6,000 years old and refer to the Sumerians. Sumeria lay between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers including Southern Mesopotamia and the ancient cities of Babylon and Ur. It is said that the Sumerians discovered the fermentation process by chance. No one knows today exactly how this occurred, but it could be that a piece of bread or grain became wet and a short time later, it began to ferment and a inebriating pulp resulted. A seal around 4,000 years old is a Sumerian "Hymn to Ninkasi", the goddess of brewing. This "hymn" is also a recipe for making beer. A description of the making of beer on this ancient engraving in the Sumerian language is the earliest account of what is easily recognized as barley, followed by a pictograph of bread being baked, crumbled into water to form a mash, and then made into a drink that is recorded as having made people feel "exhilarated, wonderful and blissful." It could be that baked bread was a convenient method of storing and transporting a resource for making beer. The Sumerians were able to repeat this process and are assumed to be he first civilized culture to brew beer. They had discovered a "divine drink" which certainly was a gift from the gods.
