🧉 Formating

Big Idea - red highlight

PE (political, economical) - orange highlight

CS (cultural, social) - yellow highlight

IE (innovative, environmental) - green highlight

cause → effect

word <- definition

Short on time? The introduction is a summary of the rest of the book.

🍼 Introduction: Vital Fluids

• Importance of Water in Past

  • A long time ago (150,000 years to civilization) → humans confined to rivers

    • storing was impractical

  • Other beverages emerged → had to be made deliberately (unlike water)

    • Water was disease filled → different beverages were not

    • many uses

      • currencies

      • religious rites

      • political symbols

      • philosophical + artistic inspiration

      • highlight power + status of elite

      • subjugate + appease lessers

      • celebrate births

      • grieve deaths

      • forge + strengthen social bonds

      • seal business transactions + treaties

      • sharpen senses

      • dull the mind

      • use in medicine

      • use as poison

  • Each drink became popular when:

    • met a need OR aligned w historical trend

• Path toward modernity (Beer)

  • adoption of farming

    • Near East 10k years ago → domestication of cereal (wheat etc.) grains

      • → rudimentary beer

  • growth from civilizations

    • organized agricultural large scale → surplus

      • surplus of grain → more beer

      • acted as a normal drink +

      • freed workers → specialization

        • wages paid in bread + beer (cereal grains)

• Preliminary Western thought (Wine)

  • Greeks

    • advances in philosophy + politics + science + literature

      • spread worldwide through wine trade on seas

      • discussed at symposia (formal drinking parties)

  • Romans

    • hierarchy reflected in wine style

    • Christianity → wine part of ritual

    • Islam → wine banned

• Exploration and Expansion (Spirits) [aka brandy, rum, whiskey, etc.]

  • Global sea routes

    • European wanted to expand

    • Distilled drinks → alcohol at sea

  • Currency

    • slave trade

    • establishing USA

• Age of Reason (Coffee)

  • coffee houses

    • new scientific + political + economic theories

    • different from taverns

    • encouraged clear thinking

    • scientific societies + newspapers + financial institutions + revolutions

• Trade with the East (Tea)

  • foundations for imperialism + industrialization

    • open trade routes from popularity in Britain

    • Britain as a global superpower

  • need to tea

    • demand → British foreign policy

      • independence of USA

      • less power in China

      • production in India

• America’s National Drink (Coca-Cola)

  • consumer capitalism → US into superpower

    • invented as a medical pick-me-up

    • with American armed forces around the world

  • symbol of single global marketplace

    • world’s most widely know product

🍺 Beer in Mesopotamia and Egypt

🦴 A Stone-Age Brew

🦖 A Pint of Prehistory

• migration of humans out of Africa

  • 50k years ago

  • small bands

    • lived in temporary homes → caves, huts, tents

    • seasonal food supply

• Agricultural revolution

  • 12k years ago

  • settled into villages → cities → empires

  • also developed new technologies

• Barley + wheat

  • before could only drink water/animal products

  • Don’t know when invented

    • no beer before 10k BCE

      • common at 4k BCE

  • 

  • ancient beer has grains + chaff → needed straw in order to drink

  • 

• nomadic → settled lifestyle

• increase in social complexity → emergence of cities

🔎 The Discovery of Beer

• discovered

  • gathering of wild grain around end of last Ice Age

    • 10k BCE in Fertile Crescent

      • 

  • ideal environment for sheep + goats + cattle + pigs + barley

    • first established large scale settlements

    • reliable source of food

• Grain usage

  • can’t eat raw

    • edible by crushing + mixing with water

  • 1. made with soup → thickener

    • • fish + nuts + berries + water

    • plaster + bitumen-lined basket

    • hot stones dropped in

    • grains have starch → absorb moisture and burst

      • thickening soup

  • Stored

    • stores for weeks/months/years

      • do not recommend

    • could be made with soup or eaten on own

      • gruel

    • → development of tools to store grain

      • guard against famine

• Innovations with grain

  • flint-bladed sickles → harvesting

  • woven baskets → carrying

  • stone hearths → drying

  • underground pits → storing

  • grindstones → processing

• → encouraged people to stay in one place

  • 1960s experiment (archeologists are nerds)

    • using flint-bladed sickle harvested 2 pounds of grain in 1 hour of wild grains in Turkey

      • family working 8 hours a day x 3 weeks = each member gets a pound a day for a year

  • had to stay near wild cereal → not miss best harvest time

    • would not want to leave unguarded

• → first permanent settlements

  • East Mediterranean coast 10k BCE

    • round huts + wooden roofs

      • hearth + stone floor + 4-5 yards wide

    • village ~ 50 huts → 200/300 people

• grain properties (1) → sugar

  • soaked in water → sprouted → tasted sweet

  • storage pits not watertight

    • diastase enzymes → starch → sugar or malt

    • barley produces most → tastes sweetest

  • not a lot of sweet things → highly valued

    • deliberate malting → grain soaked then dried

• grain properties (2) → Beer

  • gruel left out → slightly fizzy + pleasantly intoxicating

  • not first alcohol found

    • fruit juice ferments → wine

      • seasonal + perishes easily

      • could not be stored without pottery (6k BCE)

    • water + honey → mead

      • limited qualities of wild honey

      • could not be stored without pottery

  • → made reliably + quantity + when needed

    • brewed in

      • pitch-lined baskets

      • hollowed out trees

        • Sahti beer (made in Finland) tradition

      • large shells

        • 19th century Amazon basin was most recent

      • stone vessels

  • quality improved through trial + error

    • stronger beer <-

      • more malted grain in gruel

      • longer left to ferment

      • throughly cooking gruel

        • malting converts 15% of starch → boiled → more enzymes transform → more starch into sugar → more alcohol

      • same container for brewing

        • mash tubs in Mesopotamia

        • yeast cultures in containers in cracks

          • didn’t need to rely on wild yeast

      • adding berries + honey + spices + herbs + flavorings → taste different

  • types of beer

    • Ancient Egyptian 17 kinds of beer → long names of great importance

    • religious ceremonies have special names

    • Ancient Mesopotamia >20 kinds of beer → controlled taste by adding bappir

      • bappir <- beer-bread

        • sprouted barely → small loaves → baked twice → dark + crunchy unleavened bread

        • stored for years

        • kept in government storehouses

          • only eaten in food shortages

  • debate over beer vs. bread vs. gruel

    • archeologists argue

      • beer as an offshoot of bread or bread as an offshoot of beer

        • <- from the first breads being bappir

    • author’s assumption: both bread + beer from gruel

      • thick gruel + sun → flatbread

      • thin gruel + time → beer

😵‍💫 Under the Influence of Beer?

• historical evidence

  • writing was not invented → no written records for cultural + social impact

    • inferred from later traditions that continued

• social drink

  • sumerian depictions → shared vessel

    • was possible at time to filter + pottery → served individually

    • ritual persisted even though not needed

  • unlike food → beverage shared

    • cutting up meat → some have desirbale

    • sharing drink → trusted

    • clinking of glasses

• magical drink

  • fermentation + effects → magic

  • connected to gods

    • Egypt → Osiris

• religious ceremonies

  • every religious ritual → America + Africa + Eurasia

    • Inca → chicha (beer) to ground or rising sun

    • Aztec → pulque to Mayahuel

    • China → beers from millet + rice

🌱 Beer and Farming, the seeds of Modernity

• beer → adoption of agricultural

  • up for debate

  • beer discovered → socially + ritually important → desire to have more

    • one of many factors

• vitamin help

  • long term storage → would have been drunken earlier → low alochol high yeast

    • vitamin D → need less meat

• safer to drink than water

  • contaminated

• communal storehouses

  • storing + ritual → intertwined → recorded in clay tokens → priests live off

    • → autocracy, writing, bureaucracy

🌆 Civilized Beer

🛞 The Urban Revolution

• Mesopotamia → most farmers

  • banded together for many factors → rise of urban working population

    • invasions?

• made possible by agricultural surplus

  • freeded admin + craftsman

  • funded public works

  • edible money

🧑 The Drink of the Civilized Man

• Sumer (S Mesopotamia)

  • writing emerged 3.4k BCE

  • Epic of Gilgamesh

    • primitive nature of Enkidu → shown lack of familiarity w bread and beer

  • saw as made fully human

  • drunkness seen humorous

• Egypt

  • beer in pyramid texts

  • Ra + Hathor

  • disapproval of drunkeness

    • unrepresentative of any career besides scribe

🪶 The Origins of Writing

• earliest documents

  • tax reciptes + wage lists w beer

• neohilitic socialism → control over economy

  • record what was going out → writing

  • different shapes → different standard amounts

  • primary source of food → 3k to 4k calories

• Cuneiform

  • pictographs became more abstract

🪙 Liquid Wealth and Health

• redistributed to fund public works

  • sumerian temple work force → sila of beer a day (one liter)

  • junoir officals → 2 silas; higher court → 3 silas; highest officals → 5 silas

    • example of social hierachy discovered through beer

    • extra used to tip messengers + scribes + pay

• wedding rituals

  • bride price → groom to bride

  • women + childern recived + refugees + soliders + policemen + scribes

• pyramid workers in Egypt paid in beer

  • pyramids built by state employees → collected grain + redistburted it as payment

• bread + beer → word for food in general

  • also daily greeting

  • banquet → place of bread + beer

• pharmacopoeia → list of medical recipes based on beer

  • oldest use of alcohol in medicine

• egypt → afterlife

  • depended on having beer

🍷 Wine in Greece and Rome

The Delight of Wine

• demonstrat power + weatlth → wine part of

  • as opposed to tradiotnal beer

  • prev only availble in small amount

    • transpot x10

      • only elite could drink

• comparsion to beer

  • scoial seperation

  • main use relgious → creation of reliious rituals

  • wine → propganda of power

    • prosperity + privlede

• how made

  • eurasian grape vines + avialibitl of cereal vrops + invention of potery

  • fremented juice of crushed grapes

  • 5.4k BCE

  • bliblical story of noah → relgious connection

• spread

  • egypt early rulers (king scorpionn I) → 700 jars of wine

  • original greek gods drank necter (mead) → then wine got more popular

    • introduced later

    • dinoysus

    • accesss to wine as mark fo status

  • ashurnasirpal + shalmanser → social + rel beverage

• avaiblity grew

  • volume of wine traded over sea → more avilable

  • larger empires → fewer borders to tax and trade

  • volume go up, prices go down → peasents oculd drink

    • desired tribute offfering → wine rations

• expanding

  • hard to transport over land → boats carried

    • could not go upstream → broken up and sold

  • still expensive → date palm wine became popular intstead (fermented date syrup)

• assumpitions

  • that one and the other → rather both at same time

• greek thinkers → rational inqury (test one though t agisnt the other)

  • democrayc + philsoophy + scientific method + legal system + athletics

  • superitoy over forgegineers

• symposia

  • venues of discussion → reminder how cilvizied they were

  • Symposium → is singluare version

  • manner of grecian approval

• dinoysus

  • fled to greece to escape beer mediterraien

  • creaated beer for benfit of mediterrian

  • greece wince availble to everyone

• geography

  • ideal for viticulutre

  • scientifc approach

    • wine press

    • neat rows

• switched to industrial farming

  • commerial farming

    • x20 from growing wine vs grain

      • captialism modern

• social heriachy

  • soical status basee don vineyard ho.dings

• 9iamgery/importantce

  • greek coinds

  • targets of peloponesian war between athens = sparta

• type

  • everyone drank wine → type mattered

  • local/demositc → start of CC/copyright fro distinction

  • older >>>

• drinkign style

  • mix w water

🥃 Spirits in the Colonial Period

☕️ Coffee in the Age of Reason

🫖 Tea and the British Empire

🥤 Coca-Cola and the Rise of America