Posted on 08/27/2020 10:27:38 AM PDT by Red Badger
The first fermented beverages most likely emerged alongside the development of cereal agriculture some 12,000 years ago.
=========================================================================
If you’re searching for an original brewmaster to toast the next time you knock back a cold one, you might be out of luck. It’s difficult to attribute the invention of beer to a particular culture or time period, but the world’s first fermented beverages most likely emerged alongside the development of cereal agriculture some 12,000 years ago. As hunter-gatherer tribes settled into agrarian civilizations based around staple crops like wheat, rice, barley and maize, they may have also stumbled upon the fermentation process and started brewing beer. In fact, some anthropologists have argued that these early peoples’ insatiable thirst for hooch may have contributed to the Neolithic Revolution by inspiring new agricultural technologies.
The earliest known alcoholic beverage is a 9,000-year-old Chinese concoction made from rice, honey and fruit, but the first barley beer was most likely born in the Middle East. While people were no doubt imbibing it much earlier, hard evidence of beer production dates back about 5,000 years to the Sumerians of ancient Mesopotamia. Archeologists have unearthed ceramic vessels from 3400 B.C. still sticky with beer residue, and 1800 B.C.’s “Hymn to Ninkasi”—an ode to the Sumerian goddess of beer—describes a recipe for a beloved ancient brew made by female priestesses. These nutrient-rich suds were a cornerstone of the Sumerian diet, and were likely a safer alternative to drinking water from nearby rivers and canals, which were often contaminated by animal waste.
Beer consumption also flourished under the Babylonian Empire, but few ancient cultures loved knocking back a few as much as the Egyptians. Workers along the Nile were often paid with an allotment of a nutritious, sweet brew, and everyone from pharaohs to peasants and even children drank beer as part of their everyday diet. Many of these ancient beers were flavored with unusual additives such as mandrake, dates and olive oil. More modern-tasting libations would not arrive until the Middle Ages, when Christian monks and other artisans began brewing beers seasoned with hops.
Benjamin Franklin
Mead, malts, and even wines used to be quite nutritious and the recipes often involved a good number of ingredients, not just for flavor, but for preservation. Low levels of alcohol are anti-microbial, but by itself will not prevent spoilage.
Imagine living in a place where grabbing a brew was not just a refreshing rehydration while working in the summer sun, but also packed with vitamins and phyto-nutrients. What a sad way we have come to the present age of mass-manufactured piss water.
Beer Ping!...........................
There was a time in the US, early to mid 1800’s, when ‘beer’ was the favorite breakfast drink for all Americans...........mainly because the waters would kill you............
God. Except Budweiser, which was invented by Satan.
I thought it was invented by horses...................
I’m sure I had an Egyptian ancestor named Drill-amon who dragged thousand-pound stones into a pile for free beer. I would have.
Yuengling.
This brought back a long-forgotten memory...back when I taught humanities decades ago, I had a “prehistoric” lecture where I described a bunch of “cave men” having a business meeting, where they were looking for solutions for the problem of spending 90% of their time hunting and gathering. One groups decides they could make life easier by domesticating animals, so they wouldn’t have to hunt, and the other group decides they could make life easier by domesticating plants, so they wouldn’t have to gather. So the two groups go their separate ways; one becomes pastoral, and the other becomes agricultural, and the rest is, well, history, because pastoral cultures emphasized portable arts like poetry, and agricultural cultures emphasized immovable arts like architecture—Egyptians built pyramids, Israelites wrote psalms. It’s much more complex than that, of course, but this was for students whose experience with culture began and ended with yogurt, IYKWIM.
Ben just pointed out that God created beer because he wants us to be happy.
I don’t know about beer, but I’ve always said the first person to create an alcoholic drink had to be a parent of toddlers.
That's also why the ancient Greeks had krater, the enormous bowls where water was mixed with wine: the grape juice gave the water some flavor, and the alcohol gave the water some potability.
Al Gore?
Joe Biden?
I love a cold Sumerian lager.
Ancient cave paintings were ‘shopping lists’ made by Mrs. Cavewoman to tell her hubby what to bring home for dinner...............
Old Sumerian Lager will make you Babble On..................
No, it is filtered through the Clydesdales. It part of the manufacturing process.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.