How Beer Saved The World

[lame54]

[liberal N proud]

1. More beer!

[Warpy]

2. The only alcohol I miss is beer

but when it became a reliable migraine trigger, all alcohol had to go. Sniff.

I have a few very minor quibbles: the main source of water during the Middle Ages was the soup everybody kept bubbling on the hearth. Every foodstuff they got went into that pot along with the buggy water. It sustained them when they couldn't afford the alehouse. That's about the only quibble worth mentioning, though.

Beer is definitely a keystone technology. Without some form of it, there is no civilization. Another one is spinning. Without it, there is no technological civilization. When both are present, you see the major civilizations the world has known, from the chicha/camelid based cultures in the Andes to the rice wine/sericulture civilizations in Asia to the mead or beer/flax and wool cultures in Europe.

So lift a glass to our plastered forebears. You'll have to drink my share (not a problem, right?) but I'll join in the sentiment.

[starroute]

3. But the Industrial Revolution began when the British switched to tea

Tea was safe because it begins with boiling the water -- but strong tea with lots of sugar does far more to keep someone working in the factory all day than beer. There was a book a few years back arguing that the widespread turn to tea in the mid-18th century history can be precisely correlated with the rise of an industrial economy.

[blackspade]

4. Yum! Beer.....