History In Six Glasses Analysis

Beer, the first beverage appeared as a result of changed lifestyle for the early humans. Before, humans were nomads, who would follow their food (pg. 9). But starting about 12,000 years ago humans had picked up on a new lifestyle (pg. 9). These small bands of about 30 people were now settling down in more permanent areas and had abandoned their old ways of constantly traveling (pg. 9). This drastic turning point in human history seemed to primarily come from one reason, the discovery of beer (pg.11). As beer was basically formed from the gathering of barley and wheat, humans had to form some type of permanent residency, and abandon their old nomadic lifestyle (pg.11).

1. How is the discovery of beer linked to the growth of the first ‘civilizations’?

Wine has been a part of Western history since the Neolithic Period (8,500-4,000 B.C.), when cultures first started to develop permanent communities, and stopped being nomadic hunter-gatherers (U. Penn, 2000). One of the earliest written records of the consumption of wine is recorded in the Bible and the impact of wine on Mediterranean cultures became more pronounced over the years as the geopolitical situation stabilized in the region under the Roman Empire. Roman Imperialism helped to spread the production of wine across most of the countries in the Empire, which included most of North Africa and Southern Europe (Britannica, 2000). During that same era, wine became ingrained in the Christian faith and is still used in Christian mass today. The close tie between wine and the Christian faith aided to the spread of wine production and wine consumption across Europe

As beer started becoming a necessity, it showed the strong need for agriculture in society. People came together, to make an industry of beer, and creating civilizations.

Beer started out as gruel, and as the gruel fermented it turned into beer. Now it was not the first form of alcohol, but it was an important kind of alcohol. Beer was made from cereal crops, which were very abundant, and because it was so abundant it could be made whenever it was needed. They then found an even easier way to make beer by using beer-bread. Beer bread is basically everything needed to make beer in a loaf, making it convenient to store the raw beer materials. Beer started as just a social drink but then blossomed into a “hallmark of civilization”, as seen by the Mesopotamians. Grain was the basis of the national diet, it was

Beer: Beer was not invented, it was discovered. Exactly when the first beer was brewed is unknown but there was almost certainly no beer before 10,000 BCE. The rise of beer was closely associated with the domestication of the cereal grains rom which it is made and the adoption of farming. Beer originated in the Fertile Crescent in Egypt and Mesopotamia. To beer drinkers in the Neolithic period, beer’s ability to intoxicate and induce a state of altered consciousness seemed magical. This caused them to believe beer was a gift from the Gods. Since it was a gift from the gods, it was presented as a religious offering in religious ceremonies, agricultural fertility rites, and in

The discovery of beer happened around 10000 BCE. The hunter-gatherers, located in the Fertile Crescent, collected cereal grains because they could be stored for a number of months if kept dry and safe. The storage of grains made it harder to have a nomadic lifestyle; therefore the people started staying in one place. They would try to make water tight storage areas, however water did eventually get into them. After the grain would get wet and the people would cook it, it turned into gruel and when that was left sitting around for a few days it would turn into beer. Beer became important because it was safer to drink, due to the fact that you cooked it which got rid of bacteria. In the

In the chapters “A Stone-Age Brew” and “Civilized Beer” from the book A History of the World in 6 Glasses, Tom Standage describes how beer affected the lives of the first humans who lived in year-round settlements and later in the first civilizations in Mesopotamia and Egypt. Beer played a significant role in turning the first humans from hunter gatherers to farmers. Beer was discovered in the Fertile Crescent around 12,000 years ago, when gruel derived from gathered grains (a staple food) that was in storage fermented. These ancient groups of hunter-gatherers found this beverage “slightly fizzy and pleasantly intoxicating” (Standage 15) and realized it was more easily made than other alcoholic drinks. Over time, the quality and variety of beer increased by trial and error.

The exact time when beer was created is unknown, but was common in the Near East by 4000 BCE. With the discovery of beer, came an increase in the importance of cereal grains, and the argument that the discovery is a key factor in society’s adoption of agriculture, the point at which history begins approach modern times. One of the explanations for this change is, “once beer had been discovered, and its consumption had become socially and ritually important, there was a greater desire to ensure the availability of grain by deliberate farming” (Standage 21). The next drink Standage decided was a significant piece of history was wine, which is presented through a review of early Greece and Rome. An important point that Standage noted was the apparent split in social classes seen with the introduction of wine. “At the time, one shekel of silver per month was regarded as the minimum wage, so wine could only have become an everyday drink among the very rich” (Standage 50). In addition, wine was also associated with religion, long distance trading, and geography. Standage moves on to the colonial period using spirits as vessel through which to discuss the era. Connections from spirits are made to exploration, the slave trade, and the American revolution. Standage makes the case that spirits was the first globally ubiquitous drink that affected many aspects at the time. “Unlike beer, which was

Over the summer I read Tom Standage’s nonfiction novel, A History of the World in Six Glasses. Standage analyzed and depicted the tremendous impact these fluids had on the development of our present day society. The discovery of beer caused a change in the lifestyle of mankind as hunter gatherers settled down in larger villages and began farming wheat and barley. Starting in 10,000 BCE, beer was an everyday staple in Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations. It was safer to drink than water and soon became a form of payment. Beer was even used in religious ceremonies, fertility rites and funerals by the Sumerians and Egyptians. The next drink discussed by the author, wine, was a symbol of sophistication and was directly

One does not consider the origin and history of a alcoholic drink during a celebratory event nor does one consider the effects it has created in society when reaching the bottom of their glass. Journalist and author, Thomas Standage in his non-fiction text, A History of the World in 6 Glasses, describes the great impact of beer, wine, and spirits on civilizations. Standages purpose is to explain how these alcholic drinks marked political, social, and intellectual revolutions that influenced modern day society. Particularly, wine caused major social and agricultural turning points in the Greek and Roman empires. Standage adopts a celebratory and admireful tone in order to convince the readers of wines pivotal role in history.

There are many ways to look at history. Many perspectives from the past that form today. Tom Standage chose to discuss about drinks and how they helped shape the world. In his book, A History of the World in Six Glasses, Standage examines the most popular 6 drinks throughout history to describe how they influenced the development of the world. He takes the reader on an odyssey from the mesopotamian era to the 21st century and from beer to Coca Cola, proving that what was thought to be irrelevant to history has affected it by sparking revolutions and advancing scientific and intellectual movements. One wonders after reading this book if a pen and a paper or a spoon and a knife have their own history that has helped shape the world in another

Beer has been around since the time of the hunter-gatherers in Egypt and Mesopotamia, otherwise known as the Fertile Crescent. Around 10,000 BCE, these hunter-gatherers used crushed up wheat and barley to add to food, such as soup, and stored it for long periods of time. The first settlements

In A History of the World in Six Glasses, Standage discusses how beer and wine are made in terms of the ingredients and how each beverage is related to each social class. The ingredients are what differentiate one beverage from another beverage. An Ingredient is the main component that makes the beverage unique and gives it an identity. An ingredient is what makes people to choose a beverage from wide range of options. An ingredient gives the color, the texture and the taste to a beverage which makes it unique from other beverages. When it comes to the social classes, beer and wine played a huge role to set up the structure of the social classes. Both beer and wine made each stage of social class devote to a certain beverage that would represent their social class. This essay, I will describe how Tom Standage’s text, A History of the World in Six Glasses, discusses the relationship and the differences between ingredients of the beer and wine and the social classes with regard to beer and wine. This synthesis will explain how the beer and wine were viewed in the in terms of ingredients and how each social class was devoted to a certain beverage.

Eventually beer also had other qualities that allowed farming to progress and that is that beer was not harmful to humans as water was (21). Because of this people found out different ways in which they could produce this drink by having different forms of agriculture advancing its form from regular seeds being planted to massive productions, just as did the Greeks and Romans did by using their slave population to farm all of their grapes for the wine in order to drive a successful wine market (71). Farming allowed for populations to grow from small villages to cities to then allow the adoption of beer and wine to become an essential product that drove agriculture to the civilization and growth of people. Along the same lines we can also see how this development of beer due to farming allowed people to become more than just any regular barbaric man, and show that they were people with class.