5 ms·
Beer is pretty easy to make if you're in an early agrarian state with a modest surplus of cereals, not up to the standards of modern-day breweries, but good eno
by dividedbyzero 5y ago
Beer is pretty easy to make if you're in an early agrarian state with a modest surplus of cereals, not up to the standards of modern-day breweries, but good enough by a fair margin. IIRC if you were a temple worker in the ancient state of Uruk, your pay would have included a bowl of beer a day. Such arrangements weren't rare.
Historically, people have drunk surprising amounts of alcohol – we may not have been as collectively sober as today for millennia (depending on the exact location, to be sure); beer and wine have the big advantage that they're reasonably safe to drink even if the primary source of water isn't (due to the fermentation process and the alcohol content), and that it's easier to tell when they aren't (because if fermentation doesn't work right, you definitely notice). In some of the more remote areas in the alps, even children still drank lots of diluted wine as late as the 1950s, for precisely that reason. That sort of thing was the rule, not the exception, for Europe pre-industrialization.
Evolutionary pressure on humans also doesn't usually involve everyone with allele X dropping dead right away, because people are pretty creative at avoiding that outcome, and it's often (probably, likely) not about small-ish effects under good, stable conditions, but outsize ones in exceptional circumstances.
There have been bad years and very bad years all the time; even as late as the 19th century, agrarian societies were pretty much helpless if harvests failed on a large scale (think Irish Potato Famine), and that's after 6000-ish years of working on that existential problem. When bad years become bad decades, and lots and lots of people die, that's when things like alcohol tolerance and lactose tolerance can make a big difference.
Being able to tolerate alcohol may mean access to a cleaner source of fluid, less pathogens for weakened immune systems to deal with, and access to nutrients that store pretty well. There may have been a social component as well – getting drunk together has been an extremely important vehicle for networking and bonding for literal ages. Finally, being able to get drunk relatively safely may have kept people functioning through highly traumatic experiences as well. Not saying that's what happened for sure, but a few ways this could have played a decisive role.
- Chris2048 5y agoI believe monks used to make and consume "beer" too, but it had a low alcohol content. I think this had something to do with preservation? - like the alcohol and/or yeast purified the water, or at least provided an indicator of bad water. There used to be something called "small beer" that was also v low in alcohol content, made from the same grain as a regular beer, but mashed/drained a 2nd time to get any remaining sugars.
- mattkrause 5y agoThe brewing process itself, which involves holding the mash at a pretty high temperature, probably does more to purify the water than the small amount of alcohol.
- Chris2048 5y agoBut you could do that without any beer production - i.e. boil the water and then store in a sealed container.
- mattkrause 5y agoYou could--but without any theory of microorganisms, why would you? If anything, the water tastes slightly worse after boiling and sitting, but the beer tastes good! More seriously, I bet alcohol and hops do play a role. The alcohol isn't enough to sterilize anything (which requires a much stronger concentration: ~70%, usually). However, it and the hops could help maintain sterility once the heat has done its job. Bacteriostatic water is used to dilute drugs for injection, and it uses a similar principle: a small (0.9%) amount of alcohol is added to keep any bacteria from getting a foothold.
- chasil 5y agoThe owner of one of the oldest craft brewers in my area once told me that "nothing that can hurt you can grow in beer." I don't know if this is completely true, but this might render fresh water with many types of dangerous pathogens safe to drink. One famous story of historical excess drinking is associated with the U.S. constitution... https://www.wearethemighty.com/mighty-history/george-washinton-bar-tab/ https://www.wearethemighty.com/mighty-history/george-washint... Finally, there is an easy method for most people reduce their impulse to drink temporarily by the use of the opioid blockers naltrexone or nalmefene. These can be used either for a goal of reduced-compulsion abstinence or long-term controlled drinking. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naltrexone#Alcoholism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naltrexone#Alcoholism
- DonaldFisk 5y agoIt isn't the alcohol in beer which makes it safe, it's the brewing process. To brew beer, before fermentation you first have to boil the wort (water + malt + hops), and this kills all the pathogens in the water you brewed it from.
- BBC-vs-neolibs 5y agoBut this can not have been how beer was made historically, it sounds much too energy intensive?
- GordonS 5y agoWould the alcohol help keep it safe afterwards though?
- Cthulhu_ 5y agoWhile copious amounts of alcohol were drunk, it wasn't hard liquor, "normal" wine or beer; mostly low alcohol, enough to sanitize and preserve it, not enough to get you pissed up. That said, I'm sure being an alcoholic was much more accessible back when because of (relative) cost - alcohol is relatively expensive nowadays compared to food, water and other drinks.
- bserge 5y agoDepends on where you are, I guess. 50-60 cent for 1 liter of beer in Germany seems really cheap. Somehow I doubt it was cheaper in the past, maybe more people made it themselves. Like, you can still get 1.5L of ~9% homemade wine or 0.5L of ~40% spirit for ~1 Euro in Romania/Moldova.
- d--b 5y agoSure, but that's not what the article says... The article says that these genes appeared to prevent humans from getting wasted - as in becoming less tolerant to alcohol. Unless there was an epidemic of people getting wasted - and dying from it - in the same decade as some other terrible event, the argument doesn't hold.