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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.
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(Score: 4, Interesting) by FatPhil on Tuesday December 01 2015, @06:58PM
No. It was safer to drink because the water it was made with was brought to the boil, which killed the pathogens. I can assure you that if you're brewing with "wild yeast" from the air/hut/fields/broomstick, which will be a mixture of various yeast varieties, and probably an even wider range of bacteria, then your beer, as it is undergoing primary fermentation will "maketh them to shitten, also to spewen". The fermentation does nothing to protect you from the pathogens. (I've lent the book citing that quote to a friend, so that's not an exact quote, but close enough.)
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by opinionated_science on Tuesday December 01 2015, @07:21PM
This is mostly true- the boiling removes many if not all of the microbes - pathogens included. The yeast then out competes the rest - that is why there is an EtOH by product we can extract, it is targeted at the membranes of the *other* microrganisms. Believe it or not , not all microbes like the carbohydrates that yeast does. This is part of the reason making decent wine has been a niche industry all these years, getting the right soil includes an environment for the yeast as well as the grapes.
Furthermore , not all microbes are pathogens and our guts hold enormous numbers of them. The problem with pathogens is that they only arise when nothing kills them i.e. humans define pathogens, there is nothing in nature that does...
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Tuesday December 01 2015, @09:58PM
The problem is that the beer will not stay sterilized for long after it is boiled. As soon as it comes down to room temperature it is a breeding ground for all kinds of nasty things. Alcohol helps kill off these nasties and allow the beverage to keep for much longer.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 01 2015, @11:48PM
You are parsing wrong (or just being pedantic). Bringing water to the boil was part of the process that early man used to ferment beer, was it not?