Which came first; beer or bread?

Agriculture was dependent on mans ability to sustain himself. The practice of agriculture required a perceived value in the grains cultivated since it required a settled lifestyle which was not typical of herders. The differentiation between hunters and gatherers was defined in the 10,000 BC primarily along 30 degrees latitude.
Farming and irrigation came much later in 5000 BC. By this time post glacial warming was in full swing, pottery making became an important way for gatherers to store cereals. Kilning was important not just for making clay pots but for metallurgy as well. All of these developments were parallel to the making of beer.
Like others I have toyed with the question which came first beer or bread. When I contemplate on the Ninkasi poem it is clear that the practice of making a loaf first answers the question but not in the way one might think. I propose that loaf making was done for the purpose of making beer and did not become a staple in itself until after the fact.

I recently purchased The Oxford Companion to Beer from Amazon. 


To tell you the truth I could hardly wait for its release.  The book is simply bound with blank end pages. The book jacket is very handsome.  It has very few photo plates considering the number of pages (a hefty 920) and amount of information in the book.

The Editor in Chief, Garrett Oliver brings elegance to the undertaking of the job which is well bore out in the Preface. Horst Dornbusch, Associate Editor as well as founder of Cerevisia Communications, is a great asset to the of compilation which is a massive undertaking for the subject.  Another heavyweight in the industry and advisory board to the publication is Charles Bamforth. It is difficult to undertake any serious research of beer without coming across his name.

While the book is very modest in print it is behemoth in content. The topical outline is comprehensive. Each subject is a wealth of concise information in relatively brief entries. Reading such an entry requires a great amount of meditation on the subject. A book of this depth is well overdue. No serious beer writer, researcher, aficionado or consumer should be without this book.