World’s oldest cooking recipe

This post will begin a series of posts that talk about some interesting historical facts about beer. One post does not a series make, so hopefully I’ll get around to writing more of these later on, we’ll see. This series of posts is entirely based on scientific facts and solid evidence. Except for the parts that aren’t.

The oldest known recipe

The oldest known cooking recipe is over 4000 years old and what does it make? Beer of course. I wouldn’t have much of a story if it made doughnuts. (You might have already read about the beer recipe but in case you haven’t, and even if you have, I’m going to pick that as my first beer related fact. It’s always a good idea to start off easy to get a good feeling of accomplishment going right away and then congratulate yourself profusely. Which is why I’ll reward myself with a beer just for having gotten this far. Cheers.)

4000 year old beer recipe. (Live Science)

The beer recipe is inscribed into a Sumerian clay tablet in the form of a hymn dedicated to the beer goddess Ninkasi. The hymn contains such an accurate description of the ingredients and the brewing process that in 1989 the founder of the Anchor Brewing Company managed to reproduce it. The resulting beer, appropriately named “Ninkasi”, had an alcohol concentration of 3,5% and a “dry taste lacking in bitterness”, “similar to hard apple cider”. It was so thick and lumpy that it had to be drank through straws, which corresponds with a 5000 year old seal that depicts two men using straws to drink beer. I think it’s about time we brought back the sophisticated drinking utensil that is the straw. To reflect the modern times I propose we decorate it with an umbrella and some sort of propeller in the straw. Maybe even a whistle. I’d imagine the beer hipsters to be all over this.

5000 year old seal showing to men drinking beer through straws. (Smithsonian)

The beginning of modern civilization

The Sumerians get the credit for inventing beer because their clay tablets are among the earliest known writing ever found and they wrote about everything. Some of the tablets are over 7000 years old and they document a complex society living in Mesopotamia in the modern day Iran. Chemical tests done on ancient pottery jars show that they were already drinking beer in those early steps of modern human civilization. Old hunter-gatherer ways had been abandoned and agriculture invented to get barley and wheat for bread and beer.

The adoption of agriculture meant that people were able to specialize into distinct trades instead of having to spend all of their time finding food. Farmers produced the food which freed other people to be “civilized” and to drink beer. And drink it they did. They made beer offerings to the goddess Ninkasi who only took in the “soul” of the beer, leaving the earthly portion of the brew to intoxicate the priests. They even paid salaries with beer and we know this because of some worker that was so meticulous in archiving his “paperwork” that it lasted for 5000 years.

5000 year old pay-stub. (Ars Technica)

So the Sumerians started all this we see around us. Obviously they didn’t know about computers and Pokemons but they were quite advanced even in our standards. They for example invented the wheel and the plow, defined  the 60 second minute and 60 minute hour, wrote down rules of the law, had female leaders, and lived in cities as large as 80 000 people. They did it all and then they disappeared. Or did they?

The Finnish connection

This concludes the factual portion of the day. Now we take a long step over conjecture-land into a world where we don’t let pesky facts ruin a perfectly good opinion. We’re keeping up with the times, you see, as it’s becoming less and less popular to look things up and to actually know what you’re talking about. Better to go with your gut feeling and common sense that hasn’t been tainted by too much learning.

It has been written in the Internet (and therefore must be true) that the Sumerian language might be related to the Finno-Ugric language family and therefore to Finnish. As a Finn I also notice that the Finnish word for “Finnish” is “suomalainen” which is very similar to “sumerian”. And that is the only evidence I need to jump to the conclusion that the Sumerians are actually ancient Finns. That makes a lot of sense actually, the Sumerians being the ones to invent beer and us Finns liking it so much.

So the rest of the world have the Finns to thank for writing, modern civilization, agriculture, and most importantly beer. You’re welcome. I know this sounds extremely tacky and I’m not the first one to claim that my country is the most important in the world, but this time it’s different. This time it’s true. And why is it true? It’s because I know it’s true deep inside and it gives me a warm feeling. And quite frankly I wouldn’t want to live in a world where it wasn’t true. So there, may my case rest in pieces.