ANCIENT GRAIN, ANCIENT DRINK It’s no wonder that humans eventually found out how to make beer from barley. The earliest cultivation of barley dates back about 10,000 years ago, as it was one of the first grains used by mankind, mostly in Eurasia. Chemical tests of ancient pottery jars have shown that beer was produced from barley as far back as 7,000 years ago in what is now Iran. Although, that might not have been quite the drink as we know it today. For the oldest evidence of ‘actual’ beer, we have to fast-forward about a thousand years, to 4,000 BC, as an old Sumerian tablet from around that time depicts people consuming a drink through reed straws from a communal bowl.