It's the alcohol that humans (and other animals as well) want, not the particular form of it. Fruits ferment without even being picked, much less harvested and cooked. Even birds get inebriated by munching on fermented berries. Humans didn't have to wait until someone invented beer in order to start getting drunk.
I read that both may have been dirived from porrige. Oh, and I also read that there are written records of mesopotamian beer recipies were very similar to a modern Belgian beer called Lambic.
You can't get wasted on bread (unless it's full of ergot, which will get you spinning, because it's natural LSD) Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! However, beer will get you off nicely, and fermenting liquid is dead easy. They probably would've used fruit juice instead of water because the latter couldn't be trusted to be clean--all you need to do in a hot country is add a bit too much sugar (or honey, more likely) to a fruit juice, or use over-ripe fruit that were fermenting--and you had a potential alcohol. Then you entered altered states of consciousness to varying degrees, and you found that communicating with the gods was easier when you were off your face Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! . Religion would've had a lot of uses for beer--the priests probably got blown away every time they went to the temple. Church must've been a blast back then, with everyone tiddly as goldfish and having a great old time. May be they should introduce it to services these days. Or maybe the tavern has become the new form of church.
Really! If you have any extra of those cats, I like one. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
What's up with mars13? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Judging from the maturity of the posts, and lack of grammar, 13 must be referring to his/her age. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
thats like a 9 month old post right there,and its taken out of context,and i dont always try to type some intellectual drivel,i type whats on my mind at the time. and the 13 is just because 22 got eaten by my bulk email folder and is gone forever. the 22 would be for CATCH-22,but 13 is my backup number.
Something tells me in early man it wasn't a priority to get wasted. Most of the concerns would of been about food and foraging. Killed animals allowed for meat to be dried and stored where as bread allowed storage of food too. suggestibly Bread was used as a form of currency in Egypt, although my info comes from computer games which are littered with inaccuracies. Beer could of been used during religious ceremonies and was also known to be "rationed" with the building of the pyramids. (Obviously getting the workforce too wasted would of resulted in building delays) Bread would of not required "Milling", just someone to thrash and then pound the seed into flour. As to whether there was any centralised storage thats dependant on civilisation and time period.
I believe bread was indeed used as a currency in Eygpt. You might be interested in looking into the production of bread during the Roman empire. They had some very big mills for the time which were powered by water delivered via aquaducts. Very impressive stuff. Also bread was given freely to the public at this time if I recall correctly. I'm currently studying bread making and its history...
