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A History of the World in 6 Glasses
A History of the World in 6 Glasses
A History of the World in 6 Glasses
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A History of the World in 6 Glasses

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New York Times Bestseller * The inspiration for the TV series starring Dan Aykroyd

“There aren't many books this entertaining that also provide a cogent crash course in ancient, classical and modern history.” -Los Angeles Times

Beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and Coca-Cola: In Tom Standage's deft, innovative account of world history, these six beverages turn out to be much more than just ways to quench thirst. They also represent six eras that span the course of civilization-from the adoption of agriculture, to the birth of cities, to the advent of globalization. A History of the World in 6 Glasses tells the story of humanity from the Stone Age to the twenty-first century through each epoch's signature refreshment. As Standage persuasively argues, each drink is in fact a kind of technology, advancing culture and catalyzing the intricate interplay of different societies. After reading this enlightening book, you may never look at your favorite drink in quite the same way again.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateMay 26, 2009
ISBN9780802718594
Author

Tom Standage

Tom Standage is Deputy Editor of The Economist. He is the author of several books, including Uncommon Knowledge, Seriously Curious, Writing on the Wall: Social Media - The First 2,000 Years and The Victorian Internet. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian and Wired.

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Rating: 3.9210526315789473 out of 5 stars
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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Light and easy to read, this book could have used a few drinking songs. The history of tea within China is minimal, so that it's later arrival in Europe than distilled spirits and coffee is responsible for it's placement after those drinksin the book. Nor did the history and influence of alcoholic beverages vanish in the 19th & 20th centuries, so the structure of the book somewhat obscures that.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Interesting take on how the development, use, and trade in beer, wine, distilled spirits, coffee, tea, and cola drinks have impacted human history.Standage casts a wide net here, looking at issues as disparate as health effects on drinkers and international trade policies, social status and the industrial revolution, and medical practice and Madison Avenue. Along the way, he serves up tasty aperitifs about an 870 BCE royal feast that lasted 10 days and provided wine to its 69,000 participants; one possible reason for Islam's prohibition of wine; and how to define "boiling" when referring to water for tea. The final section of the book, which deals specifically with Coca-Cola, is probably the weakest part. While the background history of the development of the drink is fascinating, he doesn't even nod at how the sugar demands for soft drinks have impacted both international politics and public health. He instead takes a look at the Coke/Pepsi competition as Cold War weaponry -- an unexpected turn indeed.When you finish this book, you may not only want to offer a toast to Standage, but you will also understand just what that gesture means. Salút!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I've generally avoided books in the "history of things" category, but this wasn't a bad read. It's well organized: Standage consistently reminds the reader how humanity's needs (for clean water, and later, for pep and energy) shaped its drink preferences. As might be expected from a guy who writes for "The Economist," he also keeps an eye on the implications of these preferences on the global economy. What is perhaps most impressive about the book is the commentary that the author digs up from some very obscure sources, particularly since he's writing about the sort of everyday items that usually get passed over by most commentators. I imagine that it took someone hours of research for someone to glean a few passing sentences about coffee, tea, or beer from some long-forgotten Victorian-era newspaper or diary. "A History of the World in Six Glasses" reads like the product of a truly heroic research process. Also of interest: the close association between the American Army and Coca-Cola, particularly during the Second World War, the economics of the tea trade in the British Empire, and the effect of coffee on anti-royalist sentiment in France. This probably would be dismissed as "light" by most serious historians, but casual readers like myself may have a very good time with it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    An interesting book picked up at Logan filled with much up to date history and corrective facts on the history of drink. The most enlightening for me was the revelation of the central role wine played in the development of literature, philosophy, and political thought through the ritual wine drinking culture of ancient Greece. This is never mentioned or outlined in the teaching of Humanities.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This was my second attempt at reading this book. My first was thwarted by me starting the book believing I could renew it and then when attempting to, someone had placed a hold on it. And that happened again this time! So the last chapter was read in haste. I liked it! Full of engrossing facts about all sorts of things, not just liquids. Makes me want to drink more of each (excluding coffee, which I don't like). Anywho, good times.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Fascinating and easy to read.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Standage maps out the world's fortunes along the trade paths of six beverages, three alcoholic, three caffeinated. While all six manage to make people rich as well as exploit them, it's the later chapters that are notable in documenting the lengths some people went thru for their booze, right down to trying to distill pine needles and other organic rubbish. Easy to read and slightly cursory; if you didn't already know where your drink came from, this stands as a decent primer.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is a fun, quirky look at how six drinks shaped and were shaped by history. Beer, wine, liqueur, coffee, tea, and cola are discussed: how they arose, how they were viewed, and how they affected world events. I especially enjoyed the section that talked about early coffee houses as dens of revolution.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This fascinating chronicle covers beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea and Coca Cola. Each one could have been a book to itself. This made a very nice overview of the subjects.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The author traces how the discovery and diffusion of beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea and Coke has affected, and been affected by, history, politics and social change. Well written, engaging and filled with interesting information.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A very interesting subject, passably well-researched though not the most compelling writing style. Unique and insightful method of categorization.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A fascinating look at various points in history, as defined by the beverages of the time. I'd heard many of the stories behind beer, wine and distilled spirits before, but the coffee, tea and cola stories were mostly new to me, and therefore more interesting.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Quite an interesting look at the world from the point of view of 6 different drinks. Beer to start, then Wine, Spirits, Coffee, tea and Cola. Beer is part of ancient history, a time when it was a safe drink when water was polluted. Wine came next, accompanying Classical Greece and Rome, where they drank it diluted. Spirits were part of the colonial period. They could be easily carried, they survived all those voyages well without spoilage. Coffee is the next one, learning that coffee was brewed first and then re-heated really didn't make me want to experience those early coffees. Tea was the next beverage to come into society, later than you might think. Today's drink is Cola, the drink of the 20th Century and symbol of American Cultural imperialism.The idea is interesting and it was fun to watch the changing attitudes and fashions over the ages. A light book but made me think about the importance of what we drink and what it has done to society.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Who would have thought that rum was as good as money? Or that grog prevented sailors from getting scurvy? This is a history of world beverages such as tea, coffee, beer, wine, rum, whiskey. What did the colonists drink? Beer for breakfast? The author answers questions such as why was whiskey produced inland, but wine did better on the coasts? The slave trade didn't start because of cotton plantations, but rather the sugar cane plantations in the Caribbean. Think coffeehouses are new? England had coffeehouses in the 17th century. An enjoyable read if you have an interest in history. Without some of these beverages, history may have been different.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Not exactly a page-turner, but very interesting.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This was a fun read. I like books that present history from a different perspective, and Standage's approach in this text is particularly interesting. I didn't know the origins of wine, the details of how Britain sold opium to the Chinese in the late 18th century, or how Coca-Cola went global. Stories like these made for an entertaining and informative book. Recommended.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Brief, entertaining, full of fascinating facts. Beverages don't drive history, but they do indicate cultural differences, and culture does drive history.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This book traces the role of beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea and Coca-Cola and their role in world history. Beer developed to make water safe to drink as we shifted fron hunting/gathering to grain cultivation, and maybe we even started farming in order to get more grain for more beer? The role of wine in Greek and Roman culture and refinement, spirits as Europeans came to new world, cultivated sugar and made rum as a by-product which was then sold for slaves to run the sugar plantations... and the role of the whiskey rebellion in building the new world. Coffee and coffeehouses came with the age of reason and tea came with Empire (the was a major factor in the Opium Wars which ended with the humiliation of China and England's possession of Hong Kong) and then finally, the rise of Coca-Cola and America as a super-power and globalization.The epilogue then deals with how we have come full circle and the beverage affecting our current events is, once again, water.Well written and engaging, I highly recommend this title.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This was a pretty good look at the history surrounding a lot of popular drinks. I liked the look at ho many of our drinks (like beer) have been used throughout history.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Nice, quick book. Light reading (or listening as the case may be) and informative about the major drinks and how they relate to history. Now I'm dying to try some early history beer but, unfortunately, I wouldn't be able to afford a glass even if it were available. That's too bad.Definitely a fun book to read. Recommend.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Not bad. Sometimes there seems to be simplifications. I wish I could remember, but in one or two cases it mentions some misconceptions that I seem to recall reading as being proven wrong. On the other hand though it's obvious there has been a quite a bit of research and there's an excellent bibliography in the back. No one's perfect. A well written though and a quick read for those interested in food and drinks and excellent pointers for further reading.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book offers a fresh way of looking at history. For those of us that like to drink, this is a good book to read. In this book, the history of the world is viewed from not just a cultural perspective, but a very specific aspect of culture, what and why people imbibe what they do.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This was the May book club pick for The Kitchen Reader. Because of the title of the book, I wondered if it would read like a text book. It didn’t. It reads like a novel, and because of that I zooomed through it. I really enjoyed learning how different types of drinks helped shape the world from as early as the Stone Age. This book is full of information that was new to me since I have never thought about how the drinks we enjoy today came to be, or the difference they made in the lives of our ancestors.The chapters are:Beer in Mesopotamia and Egypt1. A Stone Age Brew2. Civilized BeerWine In Greece and Rome3. The Delight of Wine4. The Imperial VineSpirits In The Colonial Period5. High Spirits, High Seas6. The Drinks That Built AmericaCoffee In The Age Of Reason7. The Great Soberer8. The Coffeehouse InternetTea And The British Empire9. Empires Of Tea10. Tea PowerCoca-Cola And The Rise Of America11. From Soda To Cola12. Globalization In A BottleAnd the epilogue is Back To The Source (water)I thought about adding a few facts to my review, but I think if this is a subject you’re interested in, you would much more enjoy reading the book and absorbing all the info for each drink. I highly recommend the book. I don’t think you’ll regret reading it.Very very interesting!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A look at civilization as impacted by beer, wine, spirits, tea, coffee and cola. It's easy reading and an interesting concept, but a little light on information, particularly in the early sections, which go back the farthest in history. I'd be intersted in reading Standage's book about the "Victorian internet," which he mentions in this book.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Fun little book. I'm always a sucker for popular science and history books, so this one was right up my alley. A little lighter than I generally like, but don't let the three stars put you off; this was a fast, fun, informative read.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    interesting premise - well done
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This pleasant-enough little ditty takes a look at the origins of six drinks that have prominently played a role in various world civilizations over time. Three contain alcohol: beer, wine, and spirits, while three contain caffeine: coffee, tea, and Coca-Cola. The widespread consumption of these drinks generally overlaps with major paradigm shifts in civilizations: shifting to agrarian societies in ancient Middle East, the dominance of the Greek and Roman empires, expansion of global European exploration and trade, the clarity of Enlightenment and Revolutionary thinking, the military dominance of the British Empire, and influence of American consumerism. The book ends with some general thoughts on the current and future importance of water as a drink and scarce resource and suggests that perhaps we have come full circle.The book serves to bring together in a general way the origins of these drinks and some of the main contemporary events through world history. Its main utility in doing so, I feel, is to provide fodder for fun factoids to foist upon friends at cocktail parties. The chapters are short and a bit choppy, but generally end with a tidy tidbit that is easily remembered and brought out on short notice for pub trivia. It’s as if the reader is on tour with an alcoholic and ADD-addled guide: the flow is fairly quick, each chapter is eager to end, and before you know it you’ve traveled two centuries and halfway across the world. I didn’t think this book was as well or thoroughly researched as it could have been. There’s very little (if anything) new brought to light regarding world history or even the drinks and remains on well-trod turf throughout, though it does provide a decent synthesis. The depth is only far enough to provide a few interesting factoids about each drink rather than to pursue detail on any of them in particular. This makes the book a fairly light and easy read, but can leave the reader with many questions. No references, end notes, or foot notes were used in the text itself, and the bibliography is fairly slim. A few statements seemed off to me, many appeared to be unsupported or overstated, and I questioned a few as to how he or anyone could possibly claim to know. I’ll give it three stars for the solidity of its mediocrity, and recommend it to anyone who wants to know just enough to sound mildly impressive while mildly inebriated. Cheers! L’Chaim! Salud!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This was a pretty fun and interesting read. Information wise, it was a bit light and some ideas I thought were a bit of a stretch, but for a general (non-scholarly) nonfiction it was pretty interesting. Standage traces the importance of various beverages to various historical groups/countries over time. There is some good interesting information in how the beverages were developed in the first place, how their distribution impacted popularity as well as politics. Some interesting stuff though I found the bit I was most interested in what his epilogue of where you can find these historical drinks to try - so some interesting bits on breweries/wineries that are trying historical varieties and processes. Pretty solid read overall.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Easily digestible micro-history about six beverages that reflected their respective times, and in turn influenced history: Beer in Mesopotamia; Wine in Ancient Greece and Rome; Rum in the New World; Coffee in the Middle East and Europe/Enlightenment; Tea in China and Britain; and Coca-Cola in in the United States/World. There is also an Epilogue about water that brings the work full circle. No number dumps, charts, or power language; but well researched and really interesting!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    My favorite chapter was the spirits chapter, because I learned the most new information. I had not quite realized previously how recent the widespread availability of distilled spirits is, and this book helped put that in context with beer, wine, coffee, and tea. All the other chapters were also interesting.

Book preview

A History of the World in 6 Glasses - Tom Standage

Introduction

Vital Fluids

There is no history of mankind, there are only many histories of all kinds of aspects of human life.

—Karl Popper, philosopher of science (190294)

Thirst is deadlier than hunger. Deprived of food, you might survive for a few weeks, but deprived of liquid refreshment, you would be lucky to last more than a few days. Only breathing matters more. Tens of thousands of years ago, early humans foraging in small bands had to remain near rivers, springs, and lakes to ensure an adequate supply of freshwater, since storing or carrying it was impractical. The availability of water constrained and guided humankind’s progress. Drinks have continued to shape human history ever since.

Only in the past ten thousand years or so have other beverages emerged to challenge the preeminence of water. These drinks do not occur naturally in any quantity but must be made deliberately. As well as offering safer alternatives to contaminated, disease-ridden water supplies in human settlements, these new beverages have taken on a variety of roles. Many of them have been used as currencies, in religious rites, as political symbols, or as sources of philosophical and artistic inspiration. Some have served to highlight the power and status of the elite, and others to subjugate or appease the downtrodden. Drinks have been used to celebrate births, commemorate deaths, and forge and strengthen social bonds; to seal business transactions and treaties; to sharpen the senses or dull the mind; to convey lifesaving medicines and deadly poisons.

As the tides of history have ebbed and flowed, different drinks have come to prominence in different times, places, and cultures, from stone-age villages to ancient Greek dining rooms or Enlightenment coffeehouses. Each one became popular when it met a particular need or aligned with a historical trend; in some cases, it then went on to influence the course of history in unexpected ways. Just as archaeologists divide history into different periods based on the use of different materials—the stone age, the bronze age, the iron age, and so on—it is also possible to divide world history into periods dominated by different drinks. Six beverages in particular—beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and cola—chart the flow of world history. Three contain alcohol, and three contain caffeine, but what they all have in common is that each one was the defining drink during a pivotal historical period, from antiquity to the present day.

The event that set humankind on the path toward modernity was the adoption of farming, beginning with the domestication of cereal grains, which first took place in the Near East around ten thousand years ago and was accompanied by the appearance of a rudimentary form of beer. The first civilizations arose around five thousand years later in Mesopotamia and Egypt, two parallel cultures founded on a surplus of cereal grains produced by organized agriculture on a massive scale. This freed a small fraction of the population from the need to work in the fields and made possible the emergence of specialist priests, administrators, scribes, and craftsmen. Not only did beer nourish the inhabitants of the first cities and the authors of the first written documents, but their wages and rations were paid in bread and beer, as cereal grains were the basis of the economy.

The flourishing culture that developed within the city-states of ancient Greece in the first millennium BCE spawned advances in philosophy, politics, science, and literature that still underpin modern Western thought. Wine was the lifeblood of this Mediterranean civilization, and the basis of vast seaborne trade that helped to spread Greek ideas far and wide. Politics, poetry, and philosophy were discussed at formal drinking parties, or symposia, in which the participants drank from a shared bowl of diluted wine. The spread of wine drinking continued under the Romans, the structure of whose hierarchical society was reflected in a minutely calibrated pecking order of wines and wine styles. Two of the world’s major religions issued opposing verdicts on the drink: The Christian ritual of the Eucharist has wine at its center, but following the collapse of the Roman Empire and the rise of Islam, wine was banned in the very region of its birth.

The rebirth of Western thought a millennium after the fall of Rome was sparked by the rediscovery of Greek and Roman knowledge, much of which had been safeguarded and extended by scholars in the Arab world. At the same time, European explorers, driven by the desire to circumvent the Arab monopoly on trade with the East, sailed west to the Americas and east to India and China. Global sea routes were established, and European nations vied with one another to carve up the globe. During this Age of Exploration a new range of beverages came to the fore, made possible by distillation, an alchemical process known in the ancient world but much improved by Arab scholars. Distilled drinks provided alcohol in a compact, durable form ideal for sea transport. Such drinks as brandy, rum, and whiskey were used as currency to buy slaves and became particularly popular in the North American colonies, where they became so politically contentious that they played a key role in the establishment of the United States.

Hard on the heels of this geographic expansion came its intellectual counterpart, as Western thinkers looked beyond long-held beliefs inherited from the Greeks and devised new scientific, political, and economic theories. The dominant drink of this Age of Reason was coffee, a mysterious and fashionable beverage introduced to Europe from the Middle East. The establishments that sprung up to serve coffee had a markedly different character from taverns that sold alcoholic drinks, and became centers of commercial, political, and intellectual exchange. Coffee promoted clarity of thought, making it the ideal drink for scientists, businessmen, and philosophers. Coffeehouse discussions led to the establishment of scientific societies, the founding of newspapers, the establishment of financial institutions, and provided fertile ground for revolutionary thought, particularly in France.

In some European nations, and particularly in Britain, coffee was challenged by tea imported from China. Its popularity in Europe helped to open lucrative trade routes with the East and underpinned imperialism and industrialization on an unprecedented scale, enabling Britain to become the first global superpower. Once tea had established itself as Britain’s national drink, the desire to maintain the tea supply had far-reaching effects on British foreign policy, contributing to the independence of the United States, the undermining of China’s ancient civilization, and the establishment of tea production in India on an industrial scale.

Although artificially carbonated beverages originated in Europe in the late eighteenth century, the soft drink came into its own with the invention of Coca-Cola one hundred years later. Originally devised as a medicinal pick-me-up by an Atlanta pharmacist, it became America’s national drink, an emblem of the vibrant consumer capitalism that helped to transform the United States into a superpower. Traveling alongside American servicemen as they fought wars around the world during the twentieth century, Coca-Cola went on to become the world’s most widely known and distributed product, the liquid embodiment of the controversial process of globalization which imagines the whole world as a single, integrated marketplace.

Drinks have had a closer connection to the flow of history than is generally acknowledged, and a greater influence on its course. Understanding the ramifications of who drank what, and why, and where they got it from, requires the traversal of many disparate and otherwise unrelated fields: the histories of agriculture, philosophy, religion, medicine, technology, and commerce. The six beverages highlighted in this book demonstrate the complex interplay of different civilizations and the interconnectedness of world cultures. They survive in our homes today as living reminders of bygone eras, fluid testaments to the forces that shaped the modern world. Uncover their origins, and you may never look at your favorite drink in quite the same way again.

BEER IN MESOPOTAMIA AND EGYPT

1

A Stone-Age Brew

Fermentation and civilization are inseparable.

—John Ciardi, American poet (1916–86)

A Pint of Prehistory

The humans who migrated out of Africa starting around 50,000 years ago traveled in small nomadic bands, perhaps thirty strong, and lived in caves, huts, or skin tents. They hunted game, caught fish and shellfish, and gathered edible plants, moving from one temporary camp to another to exploit seasonal food supplies. Their tools included bows and arrows, fishhooks, and needles. But then, starting around 12,000 years ago, a remarkable shift occurred. Humans in the Near East abandoned the old hunter-gatherer lifestyle of the Paleolithic period (old stone age) and began to take up farming instead, settling down in villages which eventually grew to become the world’s first cities. They also developed many new technologies, including pottery, wheeled vehicles, and writing.

Ever since the emergence of anatomically modern humans, or Homo sapiens sapiens, in Africa around 300,000 years ago, water had been humankind’s basic drink. A fluid of primordial importance, it makes up two-thirds of the human body, and no life on Earth can exist without it. But with the switch from the hunter-gatherer lifestyle to a more settled way of life, humans came to rely on a new beverage derived from barley and wheat, the cereal grains that were the first plants to be deliberately cultivated. This drink became central to social, religious, and economic life and was the staple beverage of the earliest civilizations. It was the drink that first helped humanity along the path to the modern world: beer.

Exactly when the first beer was brewed is not known. There was almost certainly no beer before 10,000 BCE, but it was widespread in the Near East by 4000 BCE, when it appears in a pictogram from Mesopotamia, a region that corresponds to modern-day Iraq, depicting two figures drinking beer through reed straws from a large pottery jar. (Ancient beer had grains, chaff, and other debris floating on its surface, so a straw was necessary to avoid swallowing them.)

A pictogram from a seal found at Tepe Gawra in Mesopotamia dating from around 4000 BCE. It shows two figures drinking beer through straws from a large pottery jar.

Since the first examples of writing date from around 3400 BCE, the earliest written documents can shed no direct light on beer’s origins. What is clear, however, is that the rise of beer was closely associated with the domestication of the cereal grains from which it is made and the adoption of farming. It came into existence during a turbulent period in human history that witnessed the switch from a nomadic to a settled lifestyle, followed by a sudden increase in social complexity manifested most strikingly in the emergence of cities. Beer is a liquid relic from human prehistory, and its origins are closely intertwined with the origins of civilization itself.

The Discovery of Beer

Beer was not invented but discovered. Its discovery was inevitable once the gathering of wild grains became widespread after the end of the last ice age, around 10,000 BCE, in a region known as the Fertile Crescent. This area stretches from modern-day Egypt, up the Mediterranean coast to the southeast corner of Turkey, and then down again to the border between Iraq and Iran. It is so named because of a happy accident of geography. When the ice age ended, the uplands of the region provided an ideal environment for wild sheep, goats, cattle, and pigs—and, in some areas, for dense stands of wild wheat and barley. This meant the Fertile Crescent provided unusually rich pickings for roving bands of human hunter-gatherers. They not only hunted animals and gathered edible plants but collected the abundant cereal grains growing wild in the region.

The Fertile Crescent, a region of the Near East where humans first took up farming and established large-scale settlements (shown here as black dots)

Such grains provided an unexciting but reliable source of food. Although unsuitable for consumption when raw, they can be made edible by roughly pounding or crushing them and then soaking them in water. Initially, they were probably just mixed into soup. A variety of ingredients such as fish, nuts, and berries would have been mixed with water in a plastered or bitumen-lined basket. Stones, heated in a fire, were then dropped in, using a forked stick. Grains contain tiny granules of starch, and when placed in hot water they absorb moisture and then burst, releasing the starch into the soup and thickening it considerably.

Cereal grains, it was soon discovered, had another unusual property: Unlike other foodstuffs, they could be stored for consumption months or even years later, if kept dry and safe. When no other foodstuffs were available to make soup, they could be used on their own to make either a thick porridge or a thin gruel. This discovery led to the development of tools and techniques to collect, process, and store grain. It involved quite a lot of effort but provided a way to guard against the possibility of future food shortages. Throughout the Fertile Crescent there is archaeological evidence from around 10,000 BCE of flint-bladed sickles for harvesting cereal grains, woven baskets for carrying them, stone hearths for drying them, underground pits for storing them, and grindstones for processing them.

Although hunter-gatherers had previously led semisettled rather than entirely nomadic lives, moving between a number of temporary or seasonal shelters, the ability to store cereal grains began to encourage people to stay in one place. An experiment carried out in the 1960s shows why. An archaeologist used a flint-bladed sickle to see how efficiently a prehistoric family could have harvested wild grains, which still grow in some parts of Turkey. In one hour he gathered more than two pounds of grain, which suggested that a family that worked eight-hour days for three weeks would have been able to gather enough to provide each family member with a pound of grain a day for a year. But this would have meant staying near the stands of wild cereals to ensure the family did not miss the most suitable time to harvest them. And having gathered a large quantity of grain, they would be reluctant to leave it unguarded.

The result was the first permanent settlements, such as those established on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean from around 10,000 BCE. They consisted of simple, round huts with roofs supported by wooden posts and floors sunk up to a yard into the ground. These huts usually had a hearth and a floor paved with stones and were four or five yards in diameter. A typical village consisted of around fifty huts, supporting a community of two hundred or three hundred people. Although the residents of such villages continued to hunt wild animals such as gazelles, deer, and boar, skeletal evidence suggests that they subsisted on a mainly plant-based diet of acorns, lentils, chick-peas, and cereals, which at this stage were still gathered in the wild, rather than cultivated deliberately.

Cereal grains, which started off as relatively unimportant foodstuffs, took on greater significance following the discovery that they had two more unusual properties. The first was that grain soaked in water, so that it starts to sprout, tastes sweet. It was difficult to make storage pits perfectly watertight, so this property would have become apparent as soon as humans first began to store grain. The cause of this sweetness is now understood: Moistened grain produces diastase enzymes, which convert starch within the grain into maltose sugar, or malt. (This process occurs in all cereal grains, but barley produces by far the most diastase enzymes and hence the most maltose sugar.) At a time when few other sources of sugar were available, the sweetness of this malted grain would have been highly valued, prompting the development of deliberate malting techniques, in which the grain was first soaked and then dried.

The second discovery was even more momentous. Gruel that was left sitting around for a couple of days underwent a mysterious transformation, particularly if it had been made with malted grain: It became slightly fizzy and pleasantly intoxicating, as the action of wild yeasts from the air fermented the sugar in the gruel into alcohol. The gruel, in short, turned into beer.

Even so, beer was not necessarily the first form of alcohol to pass human lips. At the time of beer’s discovery, alcohol from the accidental fermentation of fruit juice (to make wine) or water and honey (to make mead) would have occurred naturally in small quantities as people tried to store fruit or honey. But fruit is seasonal and perishes easily, wild honey was only available in limited quantities, and neither wine nor mead could be stored for very long without pottery, which did not become widespread until around 7000 BCE. Beer, on the other hand, could be made from cereal crops, which were abundant and could be easily stored, allowing beer to be made reliably, and in quantity, when needed. Long before pottery was available, it could have been brewed in pitch-lined baskets, leather bags or animal stomachs, hollowed-out trees, large shells, or stone vessels. Shells were used for cooking as recently as the nineteenth century in the Amazon basin, and Sahti, a traditional beer made in Finland, is still brewed in hollowed-out trees today.

Once the crucial discovery of beer had been made, its quality was improved through trial and error. The more malted grain there is in the original gruel, for example, and the longer it is left to ferment, the stronger the beer. More malt means more sugar, and a longer fermentation means more of the sugar is turned into alcohol. Thoroughly cooking the gruel also contributes to the beer’s strength. The malting process converts only around 15 percent of the starch found in barley grains into sugar, but when malted barley is mixed with water and brought to the boil, other starch-converting enzymes, which become active at higher temperatures, turn more of the starch into sugar, so there is more sugar for the yeast to transform into alcohol.

Ancient brewers also noticed that using the same container repeatedly for brewing produced more reliable results. Later historical records from Egypt and Mesopotamia show that brewers always carried their own mash tubs around with them, and one Mesopotamian myth refers to containers which make the beer good. Repeated use of the same mash tub promoted successful fermentation because yeast cultures took up residence in the container’s cracks and crevices, so that there was no need to rely on the more capricious wild yeast. Finally, adding berries, honey, spices, herbs, and other flavorings to the gruel altered the taste of the resulting beer in various ways. Over the next few thousand years, people discovered how to make a variety of beers of different strengths and flavors for different occasions.

Later Egyptian records mention at least seventeen kinds of beer, some of them referred to in poetic terms that sound, to modern ears, almost like advertising slogans: Different beers were known as the beautiful and good, the heavenly, the joy-bringer, the addition to the meal, the plentiful, the fermented. Beers used in religious ceremonies also had special names. Similarly, early written references to beer from Mesopotamia, in the third millennium BCE, list over twenty different kinds, including fresh beer, dark beer, fresh-dark beer, strong beer, red-brown beer, light beer, and pressed beer. Red-brown beer was a dark beer made using extra malt, while pressed beer was a weaker, more watery brew that contained less grain. Mesopotamian brewers could also control the taste and color of their beer by adding different amounts of bappir, or beer-bread. To make bappir, sprouted barley was shaped into lumps, like small loaves, which were baked twice to produce a dark-brown, crunchy, unleavened bread that could be stored for years before being crumbled into the brewer’s vat. Records indicate that bappir was kept in government storehouses and was only eaten during food shortages; it was not so much a foodstuff as a convenient way to store the raw material for making beer.

The Mesopotamian use of bread in brewing has led to much debate among archaeologists, some of whom have suggested that bread must therefore be an offshoot of beer making, while others have argued that bread came first and was subsequently used as an ingredient in beer. It seems most likely, however, that both bread and beer were derived from gruel. A thick gruel could be baked in the sun or on a hot stone to make flatbread; a thin gruel could be left to ferment into beer. The two were different sides of the same coin: Bread was solid beer, and beer was liquid bread.

Under the Influence of Beer?

Since writing had not been invented at the time, there are no written records to attest to the social and ritual importance of beer in the Fertile Crescent during the new stone age, or Neolithic period, between 9000 BCE and 4000 BCE. But much can be inferred from later records of the way beer was used by the first literate civilizations, the Sumerians of Mesopotamia and the ancient Egyptians. Indeed, so enduring are the cultural traditions associated with beer that some of them survive to this day.

From the start, it seems that beer had an important function as a social drink. Sumerian depictions of beer from the third millennium BCE generally show two people drinking through straws from a shared vessel. By the Sumerian period, however, it was possible to filter the grains, chaff, and other debris from beer, and the advent of pottery meant it could just as easily have been served in individual cups. That beer drinkers are, nonetheless, so widely depicted using straws suggests that it was a ritual that persisted even when straws were no longer necessary.

The most likely explanation for this preference is that, unlike food, beverages can genuinely be shared. When several people drink beer from the same vessel, they are all consuming the same liquid; when cutting up a piece of meat, in contrast, some parts are usually deemed to be more desirable than others. As a result, sharing a drink with someone is a universal symbol of hospitality and friendship. It signals that the person offering the drink can be trusted, by demonstrating that it is not poisoned or otherwise unsuitable for consumption. The earliest beer, brewed in a primitive vessel in an era that predated the use of individual cups, would have to have been shared. Although it is no longer customary to offer visitors a straw through which to drink from a communal vat of beer, today tea or coffee may be offered from a shared pot, or a glass of wine or spirits from a shared bottle. And when drinking alcohol in a social setting, the clinking of glasses symbolically reunites the glasses into a single vessel of shared liquid. These are traditions with very ancient origins.

Just as ancient is the notion that drinks, and alcoholic drinks in particular, have supernatural properties. To Neolithic drinkers, beer’s ability to intoxicate and induce a state of altered consciousness seemed magical. So, too, did the mysterious process of fermentation, which transformed ordinary gruel into beer. The obvious

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