The team worked with Peruvian brewers to recreate the ancient chicha recipe used at Cerro Baul. Credit: Donna Nash
Posted on 04/22/2019 5:42:00 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
A thousand years ago, the Wari empire stretched across Peru. At its height, it covered an area the size of the Eastern seaboard of the US from New York City to Jacksonville. It lasted for 500 years, from 600 to 1100 AD, before eventually giving rise to the Inca. That's a long time for an empire to remain intact, and archaeologists are studying remnants of the Wari culture to see what kept it ticking. A new study found an important factor that might have helped: a steady supply of beer...
Nearly twenty years ago, Williams, Nash, and their team discovered an ancient Wari brewery in Cerro Baúl in the mountains of southern Peru... And since the beer they brewed, a light, sour beverage called chicha, was only good for about a week after being made, it wasn't shipped offsite -- people had to come to festivals at Cerro Baúl to drink it. These festivals were important to Wari society -- between one and two hundred local political elites would attend, and they would drink chicha from three-foot-tall ceramic vessels decorated to look like Wari gods and leaders...
One, the vessels were made of clay that came from nearby, and two, the beer was made of pepper berries, an ingredient that can grow even during a drought. Both these things would help make for a steady beer supply -- even if a drought made it hard to grow other chicha ingredients like corn, or if changes in trade made it hard to get clay from far away, vessels of pepper berry chicha would still be readily available.
(Excerpt) Read more at eurekalert.org ...
The team worked with Peruvian brewers to recreate the ancient chicha recipe used at Cerro Baul. Credit: Donna Nash
Brexit actually gets mentioned, in lieu of either climate change, transgenderism, or Donald Trump.
Beer has saved civilization more than once.
L
Outstanding post! Thank you immensely Sunkenciv!
Hence the term, "head of state". ;^)
My pleasure. GGG has been a regular microbrewery of stories lately.
But if you knew how chicha was made in Peru you probably wouldn't drink it.
I knew it all along. To think - the Sumerians had beer six millennia ago and it took us until 1890 to come up with the bottle cap. And we call this a civilization?
Phil Harding of Time Team would heartily agree:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61lfmiAMC84 What make a good pub.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFg2Nnx8z34 Drinks Saxon recipe ale
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPF6NWDFPBQ Phil loves his beer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaISF89g0T4 Phil Harding pulling a Hop Back pint
After you’ve enjoyed these snippets, browse through the listing of over 200 Time Team archaeological digs between 1995 and 2005.
Amstel. Stella Artois.
“Hence the term, “head of state”
That was usually the job of the queen. Wasn’t it?
L
A cool book:
“A Sip Through Time, A Collection of Old Brewing Recipes contains, in a single illustrated volume, over 400 documented historic recipes for ale, beer, mead, metheglin, cider, perry, hypocras, wines, etc., dating from 1800 B.C. to modern times.”
Stay out da Busches! :-)
I’ve never tasted alcohol, but observing a few sections of Cardinal and Cub fans watching a game together, a beer turns everyone into chatty friends.
Dilly dilly!
Yeah ... it has been known to make otherwise nondescript women & men much more attractive to one another.
I remember one episode where he was dumbfounded that the only local village had no pub. :^)
Jobs, bread, circuses.
“Beer has saved civilization more than once.”
Conservatives drink beer and smile.
Liberals drink vinegar; they call it wine. They frown.
And all this time I thought that Amerindians could not tolerate firewater. One day coffee is bad for you. The next day the report comes in on its health benefits. Nothing stays the same.
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