Even after agriculture was discovered, it wouldn't have been terribly attractive. Raising crops is time consuming for the amount of nutrition garnered. Hunter/gatherers can typically acquire their daily requirement in calories in just a few short hours (two to four, according to some anthropologists). Farmers work from sun up to sun down -- and even after harvesting most crops require additional work (threshing) to be made edible. Skeletons of farming folk in Europe from about 9000 B.C. show their lives were typically short and extremely painful, especially among the females whose skeletons show evidence of long periods kneeling (probably while grinding grain). Perhaps, but IIRC, many of the earliest civilizations show evidence that some of the grain was fermented and therefore, it is assumed that the inhabitants of these early towns had alcohol. Also available to hunter gatherers as wine when fruit was in season. It is suspected by some, (myself included) that a part of the reason permenent settlements were started around agriculture was the ability to make intoxicating drink.