The oldest beer recipe was written as a hymn to a goddess.
A Sumerian song honouring Ninkasi, patron of brewing, is about 3,900 years old and describes making beer from barley bread.
More amazing facts
- 1900 BC The oldest known joke is a fart joke.
- 1800 BC · 530 BC Babylonians tabulated 'Pythagorean triples' more than a thousand years before Pythagoras.
- 1754 BC · 44 BC · 313 About 1,710 years passed between Hammurabi's laws and Caesar's assassination — nearly as long as separates us from the Edict of Milan of 313.
- 1754 BC · 1700 BC As Hammurabi was carving his laws, North Americans were piling up giant earthworks.
- 1750 BC The oldest known customer complaint, from around 1750 BC, is about bad copper.
- 1700 BC A Babylonian student worked out the square root of two to six decimal places.