The history of alcoholic beverages has a special fascination to archaeologists and anthropologists. Partly, the fascination rests in the economics of manufacture, trading and consuming alcohol, for home brew, special feasting, market, industry.
Amphorae from Herculaneum, from Paul Asman and Jill Lenoble
Partly it is the social restrictions placed on alcohol's use in the past and the present: social taboos have always defined who can drink alcohol, when and where. And partly, perhaps most importantly, it is the role that alcohol and other psychoactive drugs played in religion. How were these tools of the shaman used to temporarily exit the mundane world, to commune with the gods, to gain some control over the unpredictability of the world?
Comments
I’m just someone with a passing interest in this, and not an expert, but I always have been fascinated by the fact that there didn’t seem to be any alcohol in North America when the Europeans arrived, but it did exist in Central / South America (pulque). Unless I have that wrong, this strikes me as odd. It would mean that either people came across the Bering land bridge with the knowledge of how to make alcohol and then lost it, but regained it as they moved further south. Or, they came across the land bridge without the knowledge, and once they reached the central/southern continents they re-discovered it? Either way, it doesn’t add up for me. It also seems like a way that the age old question of “When did we arrive in the Americas?” might get narrowed down (too much to hope for, I know). If anyone knows of a page that explains or addresses this I would love to read it!
-SASandi
Grain is the staple from which alcohol is typically fermented for beer. Grain cultivation was not carried across the Bering Strait. It was discovered independently in the Americas, and the plants of the Americas are not genetically predisposed to grain agriculture, so it took somewhat longer. Please read People Plants and Genes for background. Fermentation of fruits for wine-like beverage? Across the Bering? If the paleo-Indians who made the crossing knew of winecraft, they forgot it in the long trek without readily fermentable fruit in the far north. Of course, the Americas may have been peopled by several interdependent routes, including water craft along the Pacific coast.