Beer may be responsible for civilization.

As essential as water is, it's storage for larger communities was impossible ten millennia ago. Fermentation occurs spontaneously, especially in confined spaces for storing cereals. Yeast, water, heat, time, hello home brewers.

 

Archaeologists have been debating this theory for a few decades. There is growing evidence that supports the theory.

http://www.livescience.com/10221-beer-lubricated-rise-civilization-study-suggests.html

 

Beer, dogs, and grandparents enabled civilization.

 

Not so sure about this, having seen how many folks get uncivilized with a few beers in them...

 

And as we all know, beer stimulates "civilized" conversation. I personally believe that fermented beverages likely have provided a positive genetic predisposition to those fortunate enough to have had them as part of their general cultural development. Water born diseases continue to plague our species worldwide. Fermented beverages allows "safe" drinking!

 

Wonder what the can release lines were like back then for hazy PAs. (Remember there were no IPAs then because there was no I yet.)

 

Please remember that professional historians and archaeologists who study prehistoric times are similar to scientists. They start with a hypothesis from which they use very limited factual evidence to substantiate. It becomes a theory if enough of their peers think the facts substantiate the hypothesis. Where prehistory differentiates from science, however, is that prehistoric theories can never be proven. Sorry for the lecture, but I do get tired of historians arguing as if they "know" something when in fact it is at best an educated guess. At the end of the day it is called prehistory for a reason.

Cultivation and the rise of civilization are intertwined. Obviously these people saw benefits to becoming stationary, growing grains, and structuring society. Beer was one of the benefits, but know one will ever know if it was a primary benefit or secondary.

 

I suppose beer might be credited with helping evolution to some extent; beer may have led to overcoming inhibition, promoting mating between those that might otherwise not have. Still happens today - beer goggles may be thousands of years old...

 

Beer is multifaceted that way.

 

Beer saved the world.

 

Many scientific facts exist that were gleaned from times before human language and history. Prehistory is not that long ago. Anyway, speculation about human roots and development through time is always fascinating and riveting to me. Our literature is full of great writing that sparks the imagining of all of the ways that we (may) have arrived here. We may not know exactly, but we have a pretty damned good idea. I always have loved Loren Eiseley's The Immense Journey.

 

I personally think this is giving beer a bit too much credit.

 

Keep in mind that if the first "beer" came about by accident when people were making gruel, then gruel would have predated beer and could have been the actual spur for farming. Would the technology level at the time and the unpredictability of fermentation been compatiple with the theory that the desire for an alcoholic beverage was the main drive for initial agriculture? This is the question that the speculators need to grapple with.

 

As someone who has had more than one in depth conversation with more than one archaeologist and with other types of scientists in my professional life, I mostly agree with this, but let's push your observation a step further. In science (and historical work in general) if one generates alternative plausible theories and continues to fail to find evidence for some of them they are typically discarded. Mostly what is left from the winnowing process is a theory that "wins" until some other theory that fits the data better comes along. That newer theory is often triggered by seeing/finding data that don't fit with the currently accepted theory. Even in modern science this is the case so work on prehistory is not alone in having the difficulty that its theories can be supported but not proven.

So I'd suggest that when it comes to the pre-historic influence of beer (or language or....) on the origin of civilization, the increased fuzziness really lies in the size of the pile of evidence that can be/has been assembled.

 

Except that gruel can be made by folks who are gathering grains in the wild and who would typically be consuming it all on the spot, not carrying it with them as they moved on to new lands for hunting and gathering. Whether it was gruel or improperly stored grains that got wet, there has to be a surplus long enough for fermentation to begin. However finding overripe fruit on the ground in those new lands provides both alcohol and food.

 

Have you seen the "pictures" of some of the early "man" like Australopithecine? Procreation might only have been possible with the use of beer goggles.

 

This was the point of the first chapter of "The Brewer's Tale: A History of the World According to Beer" by William Bostick.

 

There are lots of experiments with all kinds of rats that are interesting. The German rats really like a sort of monolithic pure grain gruel. The British rats liked soapy wicked weeds in their gruel. The American rats are evolving to like all of the above. But, rats will be rats!

 

OP, you might like to read this.
https://www.amazon.com/Uncorking-Pa...RNA_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1486138993&sr=1-1