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The domestication of wild grains has played a major role in human evolution, facilitating the transition from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to one based on agriculture. You might think that the grains were used for bread, which today represents a basic staple. But some scientists argue that it wasn't bread that motivated our ancestors to start grain farming. It was beer. Man, they say, chose pints over pastry.
Beer has plenty to recommend it over bread. First, and most obviously, it is pleasant to drink. "Beer had all the same nutrients as bread, and it had one additional advantage," argues Solomon H. Katz, an anthropology professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Namely, it gave early humans the same pleasant buzz it gives us. Patrick E. McGovern, the director of the Biomolecular Archaeology Project for Cuisine, Fermented Beverages, and Health at the University of Pennsylvania, goes even further. Beer, he says, was more nutritious than bread. It contains "more B vitamins and [more of the] essential amino acid lysine," McGovern writes in his book, Uncorking the Past: the Quest for Wine, Beer, and Other Alcoholic Beverages. It was also safer to drink than water, because the fermentation process killed pathogenic microorganisms. "With a four to five percent alcohol content, beer is a potent mind-altering and medicinal substance," McGovern says, adding that ancient brewers acted as medicine men.
We hold these things to be self-evident: The Internet is for Pr0n, and Civilization is for Beer.
(Score: 4, Informative) by ikanreed on Tuesday December 01 2015, @06:42PM
Grain agriculture is predated by ranching and herding by a fairly wide time-period.
Plant based agriculture did indeed force people to stay in one place, but organized societies started forming around nomadic herders pretty damn early. If we were "domesticated" into broader eusocial behaviors, it would have been during that time period. That's not to say this reasoning is bad. Healthy, safe hydration coupled with high quality nutrition was a huge boon for these early societies that allowed them to dominate their neighbors and become real civilizations, but it's not what "domesticated" us.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday December 01 2015, @09:26PM
Plus TFA doesn't mention that having beer at home made it easier for the men folk to put up with squalling brats and nagging women, so going out hunting for days on end was less attractive. I mean there's only so many times you can hear "our sitting log has been in the same place for three weeks, move it over to the other side of the cave. no, maybe the back of the cave. no, i think i liked it better where it was." without wanting a beer or twelve.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday December 01 2015, @10:50PM
This joke doesn't really work as a post. Try making a youtube sketch with some really bad overacting and awkward paced editing instead.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 02 2015, @11:03AM
If you're hungry, you'd pick bread over beer. No doubt there was beer soon after the development of bread but I doubt beer was so important. You'd be eating grains way before drinking beer.
Grains and flour are high energy density "super fuels" that can be easily stored and transported (assuming the invention of suitable containers) and thus allowed larger populations and larger scale wars (an army marches on its stomach). Old style wars were very strong evolutionary pressure - victors often slaughtered everyone except the fertile females.