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English Site > Zeitgeist> Alcohol's Neolithic Origins: Brewing Up a Civilization

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ANZEIGE

It turns out t he fall of man probably didn't begin with an app le. Morelikely, it was a handful of mushy figs that first led humankind astray.

Here is how the story likelybegan -- a prehistorichuman picked up somedropped fruit from theground and popped itunsuspectingly into his orher mouth. The first effectwas nothing more than anagreeably bittersweet flavorspr eading across the palate.But as alcohol entered thebloodstream, the brainstarted sending out a newmessage -- whatever thatwas, I want more of it!

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Ancient Art of Brewing

Humankind's first encounters with alcohol in the form of fermented fruitprobably occurred in just such an accidental fashion. But once they werefamiliar with the effect, archaeologist Patrick McGovern believes, humansstopped at nothing in their pursuit of frequent intoxication.

A secure supply of alcohol appears to have been part o f the humancommunity's basic requirements much earlier than was long believed. Asearly as around 9,000 years ago, long before the invention of the wheel,inhabitants of the Neolithic village Jiahu in China were brewing a type of mead with an alcohol content of 10 percent, McGovern discoveredrecently.

McGovern analyzed clay shards found during excavations in China'sYellow River Valley at his Biomolecular Archaeology Laboratory forCuisine, Fermented Beverages, and Health at the University of Pennsylvania Museum.

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Alcohol's N eolithic Origins: Brewing Up a Civilization

By Frank Thadeu sz

Did our Neolithic ancestors turn to agriculture so that they could be sure of a tipple? US Archaeologist PatrickMcGove rn thinks s o. The expert on identifying traces of alcohol in prehistoric sites reckons the thirst for abrew was enough of an incentive to start growing crops.

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The bearded archaeologist is r ecognized around the world as an expertwhen it comes to identifying traces of alcoholic drinks on prehistoricfinds. He ran so-called liquid chromatography coupled with massspectrometry on the clay remnants from Asia and found t races of tartaricacid -- one of the main acids p resent in wine -- and beeswax in theshards' pores. It appears that prehistoric humans in China combined fruitand honey into an intoxicating brew.

Clever Survival Strategy

Additionally, plant sterols point to wild rice as an ingredient. Lacking anyknowledge of chemistry, prehistoric humans eager for the intoxicatingeffects of alcohol apparently mixed clumps of rice with saliva in theirmouths to break down the starches in the grain and convert them intomalt sugar.

These pioneering brewers would then sp it the chewed up rice into theirbrew. Husks and yeasty foam floated on top of t he liquid, so t hey usedlong straws t o drink from narrow necked jugs . Alcohol is still consumedthis way in some regions of China.

McGovern sees this early fermentation process as a clever survivalstrategy. "Consuming high energy sugar and alcohol was a fabuloussolution for surviving in a hostile environment with few naturalresources," he exp lains.

The most recent finds from China are consistent with McGovern's chainof evidence, which suggests that the craft of making alcohol spreadrapidly to various locations around the world during the Neolithic period.Shamans and village alchemists mixed fruit, herbs, spices, and grainstogether in po ts until they formed a drinkable concoction.

But that wasn't enough for McGovern. He carried the theory muchfurther, aiming at a complete reinterpretation of humanity's history. Hisbold thesis, which he lays out in his book "Uncorking the Past. The Questfor W ine, Beer and Other Alcoholic Beverage," states that agriculture --and with it the entire Neolithic Revolution, which began about 11,000years ago -- are ultimately results of the irrepressible impulse towarddrinking and intoxication.

"Available evidence suggest s t hat our ancestors in Asia, Mexico, andAfrica cultivated wheat, rice, corn, barley, and millet primarily for thepurpose of producing alcoholic beverages," McGovern explains. Whilethey were at it, he believes, drink-loving early civilizations managed toensure their basic survival.

A Hybrid Swill

Archaeologists have long pondered the question of which came first,bread or beer. McGovern surmises that t hese prehistoric humans didn'tinitially have the ability to master the very complicated process of brewingbeer. However, they were even more incapable of baking bread, for whichwild grains are extremely unsuitable. They would have had first toseparate the tiny grains from the chaff, with a yield hardly worth thegreat effort. If anything, the earliest bakers probably made nothing morethan a barely palatable type of rough bread, containing the unwantedaddition of the grain's many husks.

It's likely, therefore, that early farmers first enriched their diet with ahybrid swill -- half fruit wine and half mead -- that was actually quitenutritious. Neolithic drinkers were devoted to t his precious liquid. At theexcavation site of Hajji Firuz Tepe in the Zagros Mountains of northwestern Iran, McGovern discovered prehistoric wine racks used tostore airtight carafes. Inhabitants of t he village seasoned their alcoholwith resin from Atlantic Pistachio trees. This ingredient was s aid to havehealing properties, for example for infections, and was used as an earlyantibiotic.

The village's Neolithic residents lived comfortably in spacious mud brickhuts, and the archaeologist and his team found remnants of wine vesselsin the kitchens of nearly all the dwellings. "Drinking wasn't just a privilegeof the wealthy in the village," McGovern posits, and he adds that womendrank their fair share as well.

A Mysterious Inscription?

In Iran of all countries, where alcohol consumption is now punishable bywhipping, the American scientist found vessels containing the firstevidence of prehistoric beer. At first he puzzled over the purpose of thebulbous vess els with wide openings found in the prehistoric settlementGodin Tepe. Previously known wine vessels all had smaller spouts.

McGovern was also perplexed by crisscrossed grooves scratched into thebottoms of the containers. Could it be some kind of mysteriousinscription?

But back in the laboratory, he isolated calcium oxalate, known to brewersas an unwanted byproduct of beer product ion. Nowadays, breweries canfilter the crystals out of their brew without any difficulty. Their resourcefulpredecessors, working 3,500 years B.C., scratched grooves into their50-liter (13-gallon) jugs so that the tiny stones would settle out there.McGovern had d iscovered humankind's first beer bo ttles.

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The ancient farmers in Godin Tepe harvested barley from fields near thevillage and mashed the crop us ing basalt stone. Then they brewed theground grain into a considerable range of varieties, enjoying a sweet,caramel-flavored dark beer, an amber-hued lager-like concoction, andother pleasant-tasting beverages.

Around the same time, the Sumerians were paying homage to theirfertility goddess Nin-Harra, whom they considered to be the inventorof beer. The creators of Mesopotamian civilization scratched instructionsfor brewing beer onto small clay tablets in Nin-Harra's honor. The mainingredient in their variety of beer was emmer, a variety of wheat that hassince nearly disappeared.

Thus the human project that started with the first hominids to stumblearound under fruit trees reached completion with these prehistoric beerdrinkers. "Moderate alcohol consumption was advantageous for our earlyancestors," McGovern speculates, "and they adapted to it biologically."

It is a legacy that still burdens humankind today. The archaeologist,however, s ees himself as reasonably balanced in this respect. Ancesto rson one side of his family, the McGoverns, opened the very first bar intheir hometown of Mitchell, South Dakota. On the other side, however,an especially puritanical branch of the family originated from Norway andstrictly avoided alcohol consumption.

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1. Divergences

hxie 12/27/2009

Certain grains, ie millet and barley, are ass ociated with b eer. Others, such a swhea t and rye, with bread. Alcohol from fruits is us ually referred to as wine.

Neolithic man learnt to make these distinctions. He was probably [...]

2. Even before we w ere humans

jwa y 08 /15/20 13

As detailed in the book "Animals and Psychedelics", wild animals can be obs erved

today actively seeking out substa nces that w ill allow them to experience altered

states of reality. And if wild animals are doing this [...]

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