Some archaeologists now believe that humans learned how to brew beer before they learned to bake bread, and that our ancestors’ desire for alcoholic beverages helped encourage them to develop agriculture.
This falls under the category of “not quite news,” since various scientists and historians have reported on our species’ long history with alcohol, BUT it’s relevant to me at the moment because of my current project, a novel set in a culture similar to some of those that sprang up in ancient Mesopotamia (the Sumerians, the Babylonians, and the Akkadians). Date beer in particular shows up fairly often, with the occasional appearance of mead and wine.
The article linked below highlights several reasons why a desire for alcohol could have helped fuel agriculture and taken us down our current path of civilization, including the pharmacological effects, but the author leaves out three I think may have been pretty significant:
1. Unsafe water. Alcohol kills germs, and alcoholic beverages would have been safer to drink in many cases than water.
2. More protein. The process of brewing increases the amount of protein in beer, which would have been important when other protein sources were relatively scarce and hard to get.
3. Thriftiness. Some alcoholic brews are made from things people can’t eat anyway (or don’t want to), like grape stems (grappa) and crushed or overripe fruit (cider). Also, without refrigeration or canning equipment, our forebears used fermentation to preserve extra food (along with drying and pickling) – not just for beer and wine, but for yogurt and cheese (which is a different type of fermentation, of course!).
Did a thirst for beer spark civilization? – Features, Archaeology – The Independent.
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