We Drink Beer; Therefore We Are
Why we exist!
Credit: Flickr User Tavallai
Charlie Bamforth declares that civilization owes its existence to beer.
Yeah, he’s a little biased, since he’s the Anheuser-Busch Endowed Professor of Brewing Science at UC Davis. However, he’s got a point.
Bamforth argues that the cultivation of barley and the brewing of beer is what caused people to stay put and to start forming communities:
“Beer is the basis of modern static civilization, because before beer was discovered, people used to wander around and follow goats from place to place. And then they realized that this grain [barley] could be grown and sprouted and made into a bread and crumbled and converted into a liquid which gave a nice, warm, cozy feeling. So gone were the days that they followed goats around. They stayed put while the grain grew and while the beer was brewed. And they made villages out of their tents. And those villages became towns, and those towns became cities. And so here we are in New York, thanks to beer.”
Hurray for beer!
