The Wikipedia version of the origin of agriculture is that, around 12,000 years ago, people in the eastern Mediterranean started cultivating grains and legumes. Instead of migrating to wherever they could find food in the wild, they saved seeds and planted them in the same location year after year. Through seed selection, their productivity improved, they figured out how to make bread, and their crops were able to feed them year round.
If you think about how fermentation was discovered, it seems reasonable to think that an amount of some grain, possibly stored for future use, got wet and, being contained in some vessel, fermented. That presupposes that the grain was intended for a different use. If that is true, bread came before beer.
This comment is simple speculation.
If you think about how fermentation was discovered, it seems reasonable to think that an amount of some grain, possibly stored for future use, got wet and, being contained in some vessel, fermented. That presupposes that the grain was intended for a different use. If that is true, bread came before beer.