Hoosierati has a brief review of a book with an interesting notion: “that the history of the world can be told using six signature beverages (beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea and Coca-Cola).” The book is entitled A History of the World in Six Glasses.
Per Hoosierati:
Beer contributed to an increase in farming and decrease in hunting.
Wine divided classes and cultures, particularly in Greece and Rome.
Spirits influenced slavery, the American Revolution, and contributed to the British Navy’s strength.
Tea improved and sustained life, and it was the “lubricant” for the industrial revolution.
Coffee (and coffeehouses) served as fuel for the enlightenment.
Coca-Cola, love it or hate it, is symbolic of America’s rise in dominance.
Cane sugar is what “fueled” the Industrial Revolution, not tea.
One of these days I’m gonna remember to save a copy of this so I don’t have to type it out with a thirty-pound book on my lap ever again:
“Spontaneous fermentation of grapes, apples, oranges, pineapples, may have produced a pleasant drink by chance…but it becomes more difficult to make mere chance account for the alcoholic fermentation of cows’, mares’ and she-camels’ milk, which does not take place of its own accord. Still more complicated, owing to the absence of these basic materials, is the transformation of cereal crops, as their alcoholic fermentation necessitates a prior diastatic fermentation.”
—Larousse Gastronomique, “Fermented Beverages”
So beer–so called; it would not be recognized as such by your average indiscriminating Old Milwaukee bibbler today, since the fermentation of grain goes wildly out of control quickly without low temperatures–had to come much later, and could not have been much of an influence on the cultivation of grain. (The real attraction there being that grain could feed an enormous number of people per area, and can be stored almost indefinitely, though requiring a relatively large labor force to harvest it in a brief time, and guard it from marauders.)
Intoxicating beverages are known in all cultures; they’re part of what distinguishes the species, as Larousse makes clear in my favorite passage of the whole 1300 pages:
“The most curious case is that of small tribes, which, having neither fruit nor cereals nor milk at their disposal, have, nevertheless, managed to produced an intoxicating beverage from the tubers of cassava or sweet potatoes. As it is not possible to render starch fermentable by germination, the problem had to be solved by the use of digestive ferments, by salivary ptyalin. The raw roots are chewed and insalivated by the women of the tribe, who then spit it out into a tub, leaving the atmosphere to take care of transforming starch, saccharified by this process which to us appears repugnant, into alcohol.”
Barkeep? Cassava shots for the house.
The guy’s theory is Swiss cheese. Lots of holes and it kinda smells funny.