How Beer Gave Us Civilization

Hugh Pickens writes "Jeffrey P. Khan writes in the NY Times about how recent anthropological research suggests that human's angst of anxiety and depression ultimately results from our transformation, over tens of thousands of years, from biologically shaped, almost herd-like prehistoric tribes, to rational and independent individuals in modern civilization. The catalyst for suppressing the rigid social codes that kept our clans safe and alive was fermented fruit or grain. 'Once the effects of these early brews were discovered, the value of beer must have become immediately apparent,' writes Khan. 'With the help of the new psychopharmacological brew, humans could quell the angst of defying those herd instincts. Conversations around the campfire, no doubt, took on a new dimension: the painfully shy, their angst suddenly quelled, could now speak their minds.' Examining potential beer-brewing tools in archaeological remains from the Natufian culture in the Eastern Mediterranean, the team concludes that 'brewing of beer was an important aspect of feasting and society in the Late Epipaleolithic' era. In time, humans became more expansive in their thinking, as well as more collaborative and creative. A night of modest tippling may have ushered in these feelings of freedom — though, the morning after, instincts to conform and submit would have kicked back in to restore the social order. Today, many people drink too much because they have more than average social anxiety or panic anxiety to quell — disorders that may result, in fact, from those primeval herd instincts kicking into overdrive. But beer's place in the development of civilization deserves at least a raising of the glass. As the ever rational Ben Franklin supposedly said, 'Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.'"

Comments

Everything gave us civilization

[Anonymous Coward]

Dogs, language, agriculture, evolution... the difficult part is saying what didn't give us civilization.

Re:Everything gave us civilization

[MightyMartian]

The first evidence of the growing of grain predates the first evidence of beer by a considerable length of time. We don't know all the answers, but we do know that the earliest grain crops were grown in northern Iraq and northern Iran, and that it appears that it started as a sort seasonal planting by semi-nomadic groups that would return to harvest the grain later. The innovation, whatever drove it, was to be able to learn sufficiently advanced techniques to increase yields so that you could stay by the crops; to defend them, to maintain them. That's the feedback right there.

Beer is something that comes along, by the looks of it, after we have pretty much all the basics of sedentary agricultural societies already in place.

Re:Everything gave us civilization

[Immerman]

Actually, considering that many animals show evidence of intentionally seeking out alcohol (overripe fruit, etc.), and some such as elephants actually make it themselves (pulping and burying fruit that they later dig up and consume), I'm willing to bet human alcohol production predates agriculture by a pretty big margin. Admittedly that was probably more stuff like wine, mead, and possibly kefir (fermented milk). Beer is after all a rather complicated and roundabout way of producing alcohol, and I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't get invented until there were a bunch of bored, thirsty folks sitting around one winter wishing they had more wine, and that fruit kept as well as all the worthless low-sugar grain they had stockpiled. Necessity is the mother of invention after all.

Re:Everything gave us civilization

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Here's an example of an pre-dynastic Egyptian brewery:

The vats, with a height of at least 65cm and a maximum diameter of 85cm, are estimated to have contained about 16 gallons (65 litres) each. The six vats together could thus hold approximately 100 gallons (390 litres). If used on a full time basis, this brewery could produce 300 gallons a week allowing 2 days for fermentation in the vat. Output could be as high as 300 gallons a day if the liquid was transferred to other vessels for fermentation. This is output clearly far in excess of domestic needs. Using the capacity of the standard beer jar of Dynastic times, the daily output of brewery of 300 gallons a day could provide a daily ration for 454 people if each received one jar, or half that number if they received two (the standard Dynastic ration).

This was a substantial operation by the day's standards.

Re:Everything gave us civilization

[ShanghaiBill]

Actually, considering that many animals show evidence of intentionally seeking out alcohol (overripe fruit, etc.), and some such as elephants actually make it themselves (pulping and burying fruit that they later dig up and consume)

I think this is baloney. When I Googled for information on elephants making their own booze, I instead got a page full of articles debunking the myth that they even get drunk at all, much less make their own. Here is a link from National Geographic. There are plenty more like it.

Re:Everything gave us civilization

[Anonymous Coward]

The alcohol content of beer-as-substitute-for-water was very low, like less than 2%. I don't think it was the alcohol content so much as the preparation and then subsequently storing the beer separate from sources of contamination. Obviously the alcohol and, more importantly, the Ph helped, but it probably wouldn't have been smart to put a cup of unboiled water into a cask of beer before serving.

Wine, as made around the mediterranean, had a much higher alcohol content, closer to modern beer. That was probably much safer to drink. I imagine people still got sick from contaminated beer, just not as often or as severely.

In developing countries its usually safe to drink soda because a) the manner in which it was made and b) it doesn't contaminate as easily because of the CO2 and Ph. You can buy soda in a plastic zip-lock bag tied around a straw and it's relatively safe. That's the modern-day equivalent to beer, and there's no alcohol.

Re:Everything gave us civilization

[Ocker3]

Except that soda is usually made in a local factory from local water supplies, that may not be properly treated. Coke in Pakistan for many years was made with polluted and unsafe water, sickening many drinkers before there was a huge public outcry.

Homer said it best.

[Tristao]

"To alcohol! The cause of--and solution to--all of life's problems." Homer (the one not from Greece).

It might be true but

[peragrin]

The real reason beer was important was that it was clean water. brewing beer kills off most of the bad things in fresh water supplies.

Lower inhibitions isn't a factor until after we had started forming cities and groups of more than a couple hundred.

Re:It might be true but

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Why do you think that beer and (watered) wine were so popular with ancient and medieval populations? In most places, you could basically only choose between being constantly tipsy, or getting killed by some nasty infection (it you were lucky you'd "only" get some progressively debilitating parasitic infection instead). It wasn't until the Roman period that people bothered to provide large masses of population with water that was actually safe to drink, and even then, the conditions in the Middle East never allowed for that with contemporary level of technology. (Romans at least had hills, clean mountain streams, and lots of building stone for aqueducts.)

Re:It might be true but

[MightyMartian]

The early beers and wines had pretty low alcohol levels, so the downside of alcohol consumption was likely pretty minimal. I agree that if they'd gone around drinking some of the wild high alcohol beers and wines out on the market now, hydration would have been a massive problem.

Perfect St Patrick's day story!

[mcgrew]

TFS says "Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy." That goes along with an old Irish saying: "God invented alcohol to keep the Irish from conquering the world."

Errant twaddle

[Stirling Newberry]

Domestication of grains starts 2000 years, at latest, from the earliest brewing of beer. The "beer hypothesis" also lacks skeletal evidence, and also genomic evidence. More interesting is the rapid spread of later lactose tolerance, which has an extremely high selective index. Also contradicting the reductive understanding of the role of beer is the lack of pottery containers for it in many early cultures, or lack of evidence for brewing in places such as China, even though rice and grain cultivation were quite early there.

So summary: beer is late, it is missing from many cultures, and the genomics would support a much higher selection for digesting of it –as they do with milk –if a small area invented brewing and this was the core civilizing agent.

further, linguistic convergence argues for language being close to 100,000 years old, and cultural progressions, that is "fashion" are as much as 70,000 years old. The understanding of band organization - that is groups smaller than tribes that do not produce a surplus, and there fore have little to no "state" apparatus or long term castes - is not the placid realm before angst. The Australian aboriginal mythology is filled with a sense of angst as their climate changed, and they are band organized.

There are many better hypotheses for the role of intoxication in human history. Far more likely beer takes off as soon as agriculture becomes intertwined with water, because over the long term the water becomes fouled. It also has an important role when economic castes in settlements start to become forces in themselves. It may have been used as part of combat, as the only medication they had.

This doesn't even pass a simple date match of events to create a timeline.