Beer...is there nothing it can't do?.........

 

     Tempting though it is to attribute the adoption of agriculture entirely to beer, it seems most likely that beer drinking was just one of many factors that helped to tip the balance away from hunting and gathering and toward farming and a sedentary lifestyle based on small settlements.  Once this transition had begun, a ratchet effect took hold: The more farming was relied on as a means of food production by a particular community, and the more its population grew, the harder it was to go back to the old nomadic lifestyle based on hunting and gathering.

     Beer drinking would also have assisted the transition to farming in a more subtle way.  Because long-term storage of beer was difficult, and complete fermentation takes up to a week, most beer would have been drunk much sooner, while still fermenting.  Such a beer would have a relatively low alcohol content by modern standards but would have been rich in suspended yeast, which dramatically improved its protein and vitamin content.  The high level of vitamin B, in particular, would have compensated for the decline in the consumption of meat, the usual source of that vitamin, as hunting gave way to farming.

-Tom Standage, A History of the World in 6 Glasses