Our 9000-Year Love Affair With Booze

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/02/alcohol-discovery-addiction-booze-human-culture/

by pepys • 9 years ago

83 16 9 years ago

nationalgeographic.com

Pica_soO3• 9 years ago

Hey, it made us a agrarian society. Nothing more willing to settle down then a alcoholic needing wheat and honey.

frozenport• 9 years ago

Well the Mongolian horde drank a lot but wasn't very agrarian. You can ferment milk, for example.

Pica_soO3• 9 years ago

Got to herd cattle for that, got to travel alot to feed that cattle, got to fight other tribes to keep the cattle, got to have Kalashnikov and arrows to keep the cattle, got to trade those techs in with somebody who melts down iron and digs, got to trade them with food, got to make a long logic chain, to escape admitting you got a point, frozenport. It was a nice explanation for a otherwise disadvantages behavior, while it was blasted by he historians that lasted.

tim333• 9 years ago

Probably a lot more that 9000 years given animals getting drunk on overripe fruits http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/11/151121-animals-sc...

js2• 9 years ago

See also: A History of the World in Six Glasses

https://tomstandage.wordpress.com/books/a-history-of-the-wor...

The book covers: beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea and cola.

It was a fun read.

stephancoral• 9 years ago

Some might say thats a downward trajectory

Bulkington• 9 years ago

Or a bell curve

mastax• 9 years ago

Interesting how the graphics in this article are created. It looks like they use http://ai2html.org/ which renders everything but text to a background image, and then places the text in front. It seems the only benefit vs. just rendering the illustrator file to a png is that you can select and copy the text. Perhaps it also allows a future editor to change figures without needing the source Illustrator file.

dima55• 9 years ago

It also doesn't work without javascript

forkandwait• 9 years ago

As a Marxist who works for a social service agency, I have become convinced that the two original sins of civilization are (1) forced labor and (2) the controlled fermentation of alcohol. At some point, a local entrepeneur figured out that he could get serfs to stay on the land and give him a cut of their produce if he bashed a few heads in. Probably at the same time, he figured out they would less effective at leading a revolution, and a little more content with their lot in life, if he let them get wasted when the work was done. Hell, said entrepeneur probably sold them the beer itself... Add a spectacle like a gladiator fight, and voila! Fast forward to Coors Light, working at a Target warehouse, and the SF Niners on TV. Plus ca change, plus la meme chose....

(I think of poor people as the originary arbitrage... Yes, I know what micro economics says about the existence of arbitrages, that's the point.)

Also interesting that I don't think they mentioned cider (paywall preventing me from re-reading), which was a huge thing in America at least until prohibition.

koverstreet• 9 years ago

And what are you going to do if you get rid of capitalism and serfdom and make everything equal, but in your utopia people still want to get drunk sometimes?

Are you going to bash in heads to keep them from getting drunk?

Congrats, now you're the evil overseer.

avn2109• 9 years ago

"Beware Marx's cure but not his diagnosis."

- Paraphrasing some wise person whose name presently eludes me

IMHO the GP has a point about alcohol's role in panem et circenses.

Obligatory disclaimer: I hate commies with a fiery passion and am the child of Soviet defectors.

projektir• 9 years ago

Bread, wine, and circuses?

Our 9000-Year Love Affair With Booze

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