We’re mighty proud of our North Carolina brewery so we didn’t need the History Channel to tell us that beer saved the world. Still, we’re happy to see that archaeologists and anthropologists now say that we can thank beer for everything from the wheel to Smart phones.

The way they tell it, modern humans didn’t accomplish much for the first 90,000 years they were around. Then, some thirsty guy figured out that without any convenience stores around, farming barley was the best way to get beer. From there, civilization was born in Mesopotamia. As the agricultural revolution took hold, inventions started coming out faster than new social media platforms. Hunting-gathering looked as obsolete as a dial-up modem. Pretty soon people stopped drawing on cave walls and started posting their selfies on FaceBook.

Of course, there were a couple of intermediate steps along the way. For a while, beer was the national currency in Egypt. Pyramid builders got paid in chips that worked like debit cards you could cash in for beer. The going rate for a day’s work was one gallon. At least one nobleman calculated how much beer he was going to need for the afterlife. Hieroglyphics in his tomb suggest that 1,000 jugs should pretty much cover eternity or at least 3 football seasons.

Modern medicine also got its start in beer. That’s not milk Louis Pasteur was studying. When he discovered how bacteria made beer spoil, it was a small step to the germ theory of disease. From then on you could take antibiotics for an infection instead of worrying about people trying to drain your blood or cover you with leeches.

It’s enough to make any Outlaw smile. Beer doesn’t just taste good. It saved the world.