Archeologists Link Rise of Civilization and Beer's Invention

[Mr. McD]

May beer have helped lead to the rise of civilization? It's a possibility, some archaeologists say.

Their argument is that Stone Age farmers were domesticating cereals not so much to fill their stomachs but to lighten their heads, by turning the grains into beer. That has been their take for more than 50 years, and now one archaeologist says the evidence is getting stronger.

Signs that people went to great lengths to obtain grains despite the hard work needed to make them edible, plus the knowledge that feasts were important community-building gatherings, support the idea that cereal grains were being turned into beer, said archaeologist Brian Hayden at Simon Fraser University in Canada. "Beer is sacred stuff in most traditional societies," said Hayden, who is planning to submit research on the origins of beer to the journal Current Anthropology.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501465_162-20022058-501465.html

[GrpCaptMandrake]

1. Of course!

Ben Franklin was right: "Beer is proof that god loves us and wants us to be happy."

[Beetwasher]

2. Is There Anything It CAN'T Do?

:shrug:

[xfundy]

3. "Ah, alcohol!

"The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems." -HJS

[xchrom]

4. ...

Wooly rhino meat? Check.

Wil mustard green salad? Check

Beer, beer & beer? Check

Honey - call the neighbors we're gonna
Have a Civilizing!

[Mimosa]

5. I've a Muslim buddy who's long said the Middle East needs beer

On conservative racist boards online they often use a picture of a black man carrying a case of beer through the high flood waters in NOLA, after Katrina. First time I saw that (way back when) I observed the guy (and any other 'looters') were being SMART. The water was undrinkable, polluted, not flowing. Beer is basically liquid bread. The ATF and FDA have long denied beer makers the right to put nutrition info on beer labels. They don't want people to know it's nutritious.

However, I'm a wine drinker. ;)

[Xithras]

6. I read another angle on this same topic about two years ago.

Prior to the brewing of beer, people almost universally drank water from natural sources, or from stone cisterns in areas without year-round water availability. That water often carried pathogens.

Beer, in it's many varieties, including those with low alcohol content, is generally pathogen free if prepared properly.

Societies that drank beer regularly were healthier, because they had less exposure to harmful pathogens. Healthier societies have more babies and expand more quickly. Looking at timespans measured in millenia, beer drinking societies would have overwhelmed non-beer drinking societies very quickly through population growth alone.

Once people figured out how to grow the raw materials for beer, the rest of society would have followed very quickly. If you aren't moving around constantly, you don't want to live in a lightweight tent that will need to be replaced constantly. You move on to building with wood, stone, and mud simply because its more durable. If you aren't following the herds across the plains any more, local wildlife will quickly become depleted, forcing you to figure out a way to capture and cage game and fowl from longer distances away. Eventually someone would realize that they'll breed in a cage, making animal domestication more of an "eventuality" than a "breakthrough".

It's an interesting idea.

[BrklynLiberal]

7. Msut send this to my son. He will be soooo happy to know that beer DOES have an important place in

the history of mankind.

[wtmusic]

8. That's all I need.

:beer:

[Ian David]

9. Old news from Omni Magazine circa 1989. Cited it in a history paper Freshman year in college. n/t

[Orsino]

10. Beer necessitated the invention of the blotter report, a hallmark of civilization. n/t

[LongTomH]

11. I'll drink to that!

:beer:

[dimbear]

12. Let 's don't slight that other enlightener, wine.

Equally ancient, I believe.

[Orsino]

13. Beer may have invented civilization...

...but wine made it pretentious.