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> When the pyramids were being built, the builders were paid in beer. Yeah, because water used to be much harder to sanitize, and “beer” (thick, lumpy, mildly
by jacobolus 5y ago
> When the pyramids were being built, the builders were paid in beer.
Yeah, because water used to be much harder to sanitize, and “beer” (thick, lumpy, mildly alcoholic – think fermented porridge) is basically liquid bread. Doing manual labor all day takes a lot of calories, and cereals are much cheaper than alternative foods. It’s hardly a healthy diet though.
Keeping peasants drunk enough to be pliable is a side benefit much appreciated by the lords of just about every feudal/plantation economy throughout history.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- leafmeal 5y ago> because water used to be much harder to sanitize They actually addressed this in the article, but sanitizing water is as simple as boiling it which is much less involved than the process of making beer.
- jacobolus 5y agoI’m no expert on ancient Mesopotamian/Egyptian theories of disease, but my understanding is that people knew that water with even a bit of alcohol was significantly less likely to get you sick than river water, and drinking beer was (in part) an intentional countermeasure. Beyond that, in an ancient context you can’t indefinitely store your boiled water and expect it to stay uncontaminated. If you are on a construction site, boiling all of your drinking water every day before use sounds a lot less convenient than just storing beer. Moreover, if laborers were all drinking water they would still need to eat something.
- rkk3 5y ago> sanitizing water is as simple as boiling It may be simple but it takes a lot of energy to boil & you can't store it. They didn't have the convenience of electric kettles.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]