Pre-Incan Beer Women
This fascinating article, also found at LiveScience, tells about the discovery of a 1000-year-old brewery in the Andes mountains that made hundreds of gallons of beer each week. The beer, called chicha, was made of corn and pepper-tree berries and was drunk from beakers up to half a gallon in volume. Forget about the wimpy pint glass! The archaelogists also discovered a number of shawl pins, indicating that the brewmeisters were actually elite brewmistresses. In fact, this tradition carried on into the Incan empire where women brewed beer, and I guess men sat back and drank it.
