Following a successful career in academia as a Senior Lecturer and Head of Microbiology at Anglia Ruskin University, Ian Hornsey decided to concentrate on brewing. He co-founded and directed the Nethergate Brewery from 1985 until in 1999 oral cancer forced him to retire and take to writing about the science behind the brewing industry. Now a regular contributor to The Brewer & Distiller International, What's Brewing, and other trade publications, he has also written several best selling books.

Following a successful career in academia as a Senior Lecturer and Head of Microbiology at Anglia Ruskin University, Ian Hornsey decided to concentrate on brewing. He co-founded and directed the Nethergate Brewery from 1985 until in 1999 oral cancer forced him to retire and take to writing about the science behind the brewing industry. Now a regular contributor to The Brewer & Distiller International, What's Brewing, and other trade publications, he has also written several best selling books.

Alcohol and its Role in the Evolution of Human Society

By Ian S. Hornsey

The Royal Society of Chemistry

Copyright © 2012 Ian S. Hornsey
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84973-161-4

Contents

Chapter 1 Introductory Matter,
Chapter 2 Ethanologenic Organisms,
Chapter 3 Alcoholic Fermentation,
Chapter 4 Grasses,
Chapter 5 Other Sources of Sugar,
Chapter 6 Anthropological and Archaeological Aspects,
Glossary,
Subject Index,

CHAPTER 1

Introductory Matter

THERE IS ONLY ONE HISTORY OF LIFE ON EARTH

Steven A. Benner

There is, and always has been, a never-ending struggle between man and micro-organisms for the opportunity to consume food supplies. These food supplies are ultimately the legacy of the photosynthetic activity of plants. The study of the history of alcoholic fermentation is necessarily multi-faceted, involving basic biological science, the life and culture of ancient peoples, the study of races and their customs and the interactions of plants and humans. Understanding the process of plant domestication is fundamental to our comprehension of the rise of agriculture, and knowledge of the latter is a prerequisite for understanding the importance of alcoholic beverages in the development of mankind.

Before the modern era, only the Eskimos, the peoples of Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of South America and the Australian aborigines apparently lived out their lives without the medical benefits and mind-altering effects of alcohol. While polar regions generally lacked resources for fermentable monosaccharides, honey and sugar-rich fruits and other plants are plentiful in temperate parts of the globe and the tropics. In the New World, most of North America was devoid of indigenous alcoholic beverages prior to Columbus, while, further south, maize, the juice of the century plant and the saguaro cactus were sweet enough to ferment directly into chicha, pulque and cactus wine, respectively. As a rule of thumb, the plant species-rich areas of the globe, such as the tropics were/are home to the greatest variety of alcoholic drinks. In Europe, ancient northern peoples were somewhat starved of "available sugar" sources and relied on grains to make their alcoholic drink (beer), while those in southern Europe had recourse to berries (for wine), which would yield fermentable material with far less persuasion.

The major raw materials (fermentable sugars) available to prehistoric man for fermentation purposes would have been the monosaccharides glucose and fructose and the disaccharides sucrose, lactose and maltose. The latter could be obtained from sprouting grain, and lactose is present in milk. The two monosaccharides, and their dimer, sucrose, are invariable components of fruits and honey. It is likely that, where they grew, juice from the fruits of the date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) and the fig (Ficus carica L.) would have been important sources of fermentable sugar.

The date palm was one of the first trees to be taken into cultivation in the Old World. Fossil evidence suggests that fermentable fruits became prominent around 80 million years ago (Mya), in the Cretaceous, during the age of the dinosaurs. The end of the Cretaceous saw, in addition to the emergence of fruits, the extinction of the dinosaurs and the emergence of mammals and fruit flies. Provided that the relevant microbes were available, these sugar-containing fruits could have undergone spontaneous fermentation and thus, in essence, become the "first alcoholic drinks". According to Dilcher, the strongest selection pressure in the angiosperms was directed toward the flower, fruits and seeds.

It is a long-held, almost universal, human belief (albeit in various forms) that alcoholic drinks, particularly wine and beer, were bestowed upon mankind by a deity that took pity on his plight. In many ancient cultures beer was a gift to women from a female deity, and brewing was for centuries intimately connected with the fairer sex (Figure 1.1). Certainly, the promotion of amylolysis in grain by chewing seems to have been (and still is) largely a female occupation (Figure 1.2). There seems to have been scant regard for gender equality in ancient times, for beverage consumption was largely the preserve of males (Figure 1.3)!

Increasing amounts of archaeological, ethnographic and evidence from around the world suggest that alcoholic beverages have been integral to the social, economic, religious and political aspects of many cultures. Feasting activities were especially important, and often marked critical events in the lives of individuals and communities, and frequently involved public rituals.

1.1 CROP DOMESTICATION

As for the study of the history of alcoholic beverages per se, "it was Robert Braidwood who started it all!" The University of Chicago anthropologist, who died in 2003 aged 95, was a leading light in the field of Near Eastern prehistory, and a pioneer in the study of crop domestication. Among other projects, Braidwood (and his wife, Linda) worked on the important southern Turkish mound site at Cayonu (literally, "beside the stream"), and obtained extensive evidence for the notion that there was a shift from hunter-gathering to agriculturalism in that area between 8000 and 12,000 years ago. The Braidwoods had previously been working at Jarmo, in the foothills of the Zagros Mountains in northern Iraq, the earliest Neolithic farming village in western Asia, or, in Braidwood's words "the world's oldest food producing community". The work at Jarmo tested Braidwood's "Hilly Flanks" hypothesis and, a little later, he proposed that there was a direct relationship between humans adopting a sedentary lifestyle and the domestication of wild barley. In his opinion, barley bread was the driving force for the "Neolithic Revolution", and this stimulated other workers to enter the field. One of Braidwood's major achievements was to assemble a group of scientists to identify and interpret archaeologically retrieved floral and faunal remains, thus giving birth to archaeological studies of agricultural origins.

Braidwood's articles "From cave to village" in the October 1952 Scientific American and his use of the new "symposium-by-mail" section in the American Anthropologist in 1953, which fostered "Did man once live by beer alone?" were responsible for preparing the ground for all subsequent work relating to man and alcohol. It is testimony to his scholarship that, 60 years on, his work is still held in high regard, and the "archaeology of alcohol" is now seen as a credible area of study (see Dietler's excellent review).

In my opinion, in order to exhaustively investigate the evolution of alcoholic beverages, and to appreciate their significance in the development of Homo sapiens, it is necessary to have much more than a passing acquaintance with the plants that provide fermentable material. Familiarity with the domestication profiles of these plants will also help us to integrate man and his most widely used intoxicant.

Archaeologists, anthropologists and others generally agree that the emergence of agriculture, together with the domestication of animals for food and labour, has brought about the most important transformation in man's culture since the last Ice Age. Despite the fundamental role of plant domestication in human history and the seminal nature of relatively few crop plants to modern man, we still have a paucity of information on how plants adapt under the influence of domestication.

In his...