Which came first? Bread, beer, or civilization? That's right, beer. For 12,000 years, says Boston Beer's Jim Koch to the Beer Industry of Florida, beer has been bringing people together. The oldest recipe in the world is the Ninkazi -- for beer. After somebody left some grain in a bowl of water warming in the sun with ambient yeast in the air, and discovered that it not only gave you a great feeling but it was pathogen free (rare back then), beer finally made it worthwhile for men to abandon their hunter-gathering life and start farming in earnest, which brought in the age of communities and civilization