Cracking open a cold one is a common post-work ritual across many cultures today, but archaeologists discovered the practice dates back at least 4,000 years.
The National Museum of Denmark has been home to a robust collection of tablets inscribed in now-extinct languages from early Middle Eastern civilizations for over a century, but archaeologists there, along with colleagues from the University of Copenhagen, only recently began to research them. The scholars deciphered a list of kings, administrative documents, and magic spells written in cuneiform — the tablet-writing system that ancient cultures in Iraq and Syria adopted around 5,200 years ago. They also found a few receipts for beer.
