There are many who think society itself was formed in order to make alcohol. Without alcohol there would be little reason to grow so much grain and thus little reason to have so many people in one place.
That's an old theory, but the whole "water was unsafe to drink" thing has been debunked pretty well.
The bigger reason is that beer provided an excellent way to consume a lot of calories fast, in a moderately shelf-stable (~3 days) format. You could carry your meal in a water container, which you needed to take anyway.
way before when the tablet was made, as residues on pottery 5 thousand years older, 8-9-10 k yrs bp
show that grains were soaked and lightly fermented, to increase nutritional content, palatability/texture, with this practice bieng practiced all the way through the stone ages.
some have suggested that fermentation was the primary impetus for building the first semi permanent dwellings....beer first, somewhere to hang out was a bonus
