"Without
question, the greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer. Oh, I grant
you that the wheel was also a fine invention, but the wheel does not go nearly
as well with pizza.” Dave Barry, Humorist and Writer.
Beer is one of the oldest beverages humans have produced, dating
back to at least the fifth millennium BC and recorded in the written history of
ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. As almost any cereal containing certain sugars
can undergo spontaneous fermentation due to wild yeasts in the air, it is
possible that beer-like beverages were independently developed throughout the
world soon after a tribe or culture had domesticated cereal. Chemical tests of
ancient pottery jars reveal that beer was produced as far back as about 7,000
years ago in what is today Iran.
The
invention of bread and beer has been argued to be responsible for humanity's
ability to develop technology and build civilization. The earliest chemically
confirmed barley beer to date was discovered at Godin Tepe in the central Zagros
Mountains of Iran, where fragments of a jug, at least 5,000 years old was found
to be coated with beerstone, a by-product of the brewing process.
Beer
may have been known in Neolithic Europe as far back as 5,000 years ago, and was
mainly brewed on a domestic scale.
Beer
produced before the Industrial Revolution continued to be made and sold on a
domestic scale, although by the 7th century AD beer was also being produced and
sold by European monasteries. During the Industrial Revolution, the production
of beer moved from artisanal manufacture to industrial manufacture, and
domestic manufacture ceased to be significant by the end of the 19th century.
The development of hydrometers and thermometers changed brewing by allowing the
brewer more control of the process, and greater knowledge of the results.
Today,
the brewing industry is a global business, consisting of several dominant multinational
companies and many thousands of smaller producers ranging from brewpubs to regional
breweries. More than 133 billion liters (35 billion gallons) are sold
per year—producing total global revenues of $294.5 billion
(£147.7 billion) in 2006.
Historians
submit that human beings have been around for about 100,000 years, and informed
that in the first 90,000 years, the world achieved absolutely nothing at all.
Then Beer came; and then put an end to primitivism and kick-started the age of
creativity and invention.
That
Beer happened, and changed the world forever sounds almost too bizarre to be
true, but many anthropologists and archaeologists now believe that it was a
taste for beer, not bread, that started people farming barley in around 9000BC.
Known
as the agricultural revolution, “beering” actually ended hunter-gathering and
led to the world's first ever civilisation - Mesopotamia. The drive to grow
more barley in order to make more beer, led to a cascade of inventions. The
plough, the wheel, irrigation, mathematics and even writing, all of these
world-changing innovations were dreamed up to help with the production and
distribution of beer.
As
Egypt took over from Mesopotamia, in the Land of the Pharaohs beer was the
national currency, a dietary staple and even an important medicine. Even in
more recent times, beer's hidden hand has been behind some of history's most
remarkable breakthroughs, from the discovery of germ theory and modern
medicine, to the invention of refrigeration, the birth of the factory and the
end of child labour. Beer didn't just change the world, historians claim it
saved it!
To
quote historian Gregg Smith: “Beer changed the course of human history. Not once, not twice, but over and over
again.”
It
wasn’t just the Sumerians and Mesopotamians who enjoyed the odd glass of
cerveza. The Egyptians were also big
boozers. Ra wasn’t just the God of life and love, but beer too – a pretty neat
combination.
The
labourers who built the pyramid of Giza received seven pints of beer a day in
payment, making the total bill for that job, 1,489,199,995 pints. For the Egyptians it was not just a form of
currency but a staple food (school boys would drink a bowl for breakfast
producing, I guess, a different kind of Ready Brek glow) and beer was also used
to treat illnesses.
In
the last few years researchers found the presence of the antibiotic
tetracycline (which was only ‘discovered’ in 1948) in the bones of Egyptian
mummies. After some more research they
found the only place this could have come from was the beer drunk at the time.
In fact fast forward a few thousand years and beer was the basis of modern
medicine too.
By
the 16th Century, the average annual consumption of beer in Britain was 530
pints for every man, woman and child – three times the amount we drink
today. Monks were the original master
brewers and the church became rich on the back of their skill then as
entrepreneurs took over, beer spearheaded the creation of trade, commerce,
banking and finance
Beer’s
influence on technology continued unabated into the 20th Century. It gave us
refrigeration after the brewing industry financed research into the process to
keep lager chilled and it revolutionised industry when Michael Owens built the
first automated production line to make beer bottles in 1904 – some 10 years
before Henry Ford took the credit with his cars (as Ford said: “History is
bunk’).
Beer
gets a bad press, owning to many misconceptions. It’s regularly blamed for many
of society’s ills but the reality is that society as we know it is, in large
part at least, only here because of it.
So, next time anyone tells you how evil beer is, remind them that some
of the best ideas come when you drink.
Today,
there are about forty thousand types of beer in the world in an industry that
employs millions of people directly and indirectly. However, the world of beer
is still shrouded in many myths and misconceptions.
Some of these are easy to contemplate, while others, downright ridiculous.
Beer
is an alcoholic beverage that carries a lot of benefits and myths.
Interestingly, scientists have found that moderate drinkers who drink regularly
but only in small amounts had lower body weights than their non-drinking peers
and those who drank a lot at once.
There
are at least two ways in which an alcoholic beverage such as beer might impact
beneficially on the body:
First, through a direct physiological impact on bodily tissues and
functions; Second, through
indirect impact, but founded equally on a physiological interaction.
All
the benefits of beer are however, functions of moderate consumption.
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