Bet you’re looking for a link to the oral history of beer right now.
Well, don’t. This is a blog, and as such, I shall be recounting the oral history of beer in verdana, or whatever script this is.
That is because when the oral history of beer was first created, they had no alphabet with which to write it down. Thus it was an oral history.
We have an alphabet, so I’m going to write this down.
This is a simplified version.
The Sumerians, who lived in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) in the 4th and 3rd centuries B.C., baked bread called Bappir.
One day, someone left a large chunk of the twice-baked bread in a container of sorts, and a freak Mesopotamian rain shower (the region was supposedly much rainier than it is now) soaked the bread, which contained whole grains.
The after-shower sun warmed the water, and naturally occurring yeasts settled on the sweetened water.
After a period of time, someone came upon this container and smelled the malty water. It probably smelled slightly sour like dough, but with a hint of sweetness from the malted barley.
At any rate, the idiot took a big swig of the liquid, and Bam! with no alcohol tolerance whatsoever, he was clobbered.
Feeling almost instantly drowsy, he likely sat down to take a nap, where the idea of bread soaked in water and then left to itself would turn into a heady drink, soaked into his mind.
Luckily there wasn’t enough of the liquid for him to get so drunk he couldn’t remember to tell his wife what he’d done, and she gladly reported her husband’s tale to the other ladies at the salon the next day.
Some other industrious husband overheard his wife telling a friend about the funny liquid and decided to give the experiment a try himself.
And thus beer was born.
In reality, the Sumerians and other early civilization cultures were deeply religious, and many attribute things like alcohol to their various gods.
The goddess of beer actually is the Sumerian goddess Ninkasi, and it is to this god, that a poem was crafted that recited the earliest known recipe for beer.
Beer and wine have gone hand in hand with religion since their inception until about the end of the 20th century.
Almost always taken in celebration and brewed under the watchful eyes of high priests and preistesses and later monks, alcohol has long been regulated by religious leaders. Someone must have figured out very early on that you have to tax something as good as alcohol. It’s recession proof after all.
Religions links celebration and alcohol. From birthdays to major holidays, religion has long played a roll in defining celebration, and since the temple or the church always controlled the distribution of alcohol, celebrations often allowed leaders to raise or lower the level of celebration based on how much alcohol was distributed freely or with a small cost.
As the world transitioned from slave-based theocracies to more democratic forms of government, so did alcohol move from religious control to civil government control. It’s interesting to note that alcohol, unlike weapons ownership, never fell completely in the hands of the people in a large scale until the homebrewing revolution of the late 1970s. Even then, alcohol was completely regulated by the government.
Alcohol’s relationship with celebration did not diminish but it did change as religous rule fell off in favor of church and state seperated governments.
We might celebrate today, but our celebrations look nothing like they did in history. Beer and wine flow, perhaps, more freely today than they ever did, but our use of them is not necessarily limited or dictated by a particular church or religous ideology.
Still, if you look back into history far enough, man’s relationship with beer and wine has always been about lightening the spirit, about enjoyment of the senses and learning to see the world differently.
When in harmony, this relationship is healthy. And our celebrations are enhanced by the sweetness of wine and the fullness of beer.
Prost,
GG
