This video is sponsored by
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using the link in the description. Cheers! *Glasses clink* There's nothing quite like a refreshing
pint of beer, but did you know there is 10,000 years of history in this glass? Beer
has been poured since prehistory. Slurped by Hunter- Gatherers & Pyramid Builders,
Pharaohs, Vikings, the Inca and the Irish. Chugged from jugs, horns, skulls, steins,
and even through golden straws used to pierce through a warm crusty yeast cake.
Yeap crusty yeast cake, we’ll get to that. So what is the history of beer, how did it save humanity, and can a hangover be
a religious experience? Well, Let’s Find Out. Our story begins a long-long time ago.
At least as far as 13,000 years ago, people in the Levant and Turkey were
making beer for feasts and rituals by fermenting wild grains. This is before
humans settled down and started farming! Beer is essentially liquid bread. To make
either: you mix grain like barley, wheat, or rice with water and leave it to ferment. Grains
ferment because of yeast, tiny single-celled fungi that are everywhere. These little buddies turn
sugars in the grains into alcohol. If you leave out some mushed up grains, wild yeasts will
find them and start fermenting. Wild yeasts have a very particular set of skills, they will
find you and they will ferment you. Make a dough from the fermented mush and bake it and you’ll
get bread, a more soupy version becomes beer. Academics used to think humans settled down and
started farming to secure a steady supply of grain to make bread. But...and it’s a big
butt, hunter-gatherers had a better diet, shorter workdays, and healthier lives than
early farmers. Why would humans swap their chill hunter-gatherer lives to become hard-working
mostly bread eating farmers? If bread was a convincing reason to start doing Civilisation
then ducks would have beaten us to it. Maybe...and it’s a big maybe, 10,000 years
ago hunter-gatherer groups routinely came together to party and drink beer they made
from wild grain. Then they realised they could secure a steady supply of grain to make beer
if they stayed in one place and farmed grains. Beer and festivals might have convinced
hunter-gatherers to settle down in cramped towns and work long gruelling days on farms
under the rule of Kings, Pharaohs, and Priests. These first farmers in Mesopotamia now had
to seed, plough, and maintain the land. Communities came together to build infrastructure
like irrigation canals for their crops. Once the grain grew, they had to learn how to store,
process, and distribute it. Which led to writing and governments and militaries to protect those
grains...and maybe steal other peoples grains and force the remaining hunter-gatherers to
become farmers too. And boom now you've got Civilisation. Learning how to manage
a grain surplus is essentially what Civilisation is. So maybe our craving for
beer created civilization as we know it. Beer and Bread quickly became
the symbols of civilised people. The ancient Sumerians wrote the Epic of Gilgamesh
around the 3rd millennium BCE. In it we learn the story of Enkidu, a wildman, who lives outside
of civilisation. The city-living king Gilgamesh decides to civilise Enkidu and so sends Shamhat, a
temple prostitute to tame him. After spending some days together Shamhat tells Enkidu to "eat the
bread, Enkidu, it is the way one lives / Drink the beer, as is the custom of the land". He
ate the food and "he drank the beer—seven jugs!...and turned into a human". It was beer
and bread that turned Enkidu from a wildman into a proud Sumerian citizen, possibly a metaphor
for what happened to the Sumerians themselves. The Mesoptamians and Egyptians brewed dark
beer, light beer, beer for the rich and poor and for the living and the dead, and many
others we still can't translate. In Egypt, tombs were filled with a special kind of
"beer that would not turn sour"— so the dead could enjoy it even in the afterlife.
We see this in the tomb of King Scorpion I who lived in the 3200s BCE. This Scorpion
King was buried with over 2,000 vessels of beer. Ordinary dead Egyptians only had a
few small jars of beer to enjoy after death. We didn’t discover what yeast was until the 1800s
and so for the first farmers the transformation of grains into beer must have seemed magical
and connected to the Gods. Beer shows up across Egyptian mythology. The God Osiris brought brewing
to humans. Another myth tells us that, one day, Ra was furious because he thought humanity was
plotting against him. He sends his daughter, the Goddess Hathor to punish people by killing them
and drinking their blood. And she does an amazing job at murdering everyone! Just look at her go! Ra
realised that there would soon be no people left to worship him. So he tricked his daughter into
drinking red dyed beer. Thinking it was blood, Hathor chugged the beer and passed out. She woke
up with a peaceful heart and stopped her rampage. So technically humanity was saved by beer! Hathor became tightly associated with beer. The Egyptians dedicated a holiday to her: the
TEKH festival, the festival of drunkenness. During the celebrations people would drink as much
as possible while dancing and singing until they fell asleep. Then in the morning, priests would
sneak into the party hall with a massive statue of Hathor and then wake up the partiers with loud
drums. This sudden "sobering up" in the Goddess’ presence was supposed to produce a spiritual
connection and probably one hell of a hangover. In Sumeria Ninkasi was the Goddess of Beer and
women were the primary beer brewers. Sumerian beer was a thick frothy drink, drunk
by several people out of the same jug. Both the Mesopotamian cuneiform character
and the Egyptian hieroglyph for beer are little beer jugs which is kind of adorable. They drank these beers immediately
after brewing when it was fresh. Each person had their own straw made
from a reed or gold if you were rich. They used the straws to poke through the thick
crusty yeast cake that formed on the top of the warm fermenting beer. The straws also helped
filter out any bits that were floating in the beer. Here you can see an Egyptian drinking beer
using the world's first crazy straw. Also here is a 3200 year old Egyptian painting of a Hippo
making beer because everyone needs to see this. Warm chunky beer might not sound nice to us
but they were very nutritious. Ancient beer was a good source of vitamins B6 and B12,
minerals, antioxidants, and even fibre. This made up for the lack of meat and
vitamins in farming peoples' diets. In Egypt Pharaohs and nobles drank
elaborate spiced and sweetened beers, and workers would get a
simpler version. In Sumeria, women working in temples were paid 2 litres
of beer daily...children got 1 litre. The Code of Hammurabi, of eye for an eye
fame, had laws regulating the price of beer. And the workers who built the pyramids of
Giza were paid in beer! Not just beer obviously but it was a part of their wages. To pay
all those workers Egypt needed to produce a lot of beer. One large brewery we've discovered
produced 40,000 pints of beer at a time. Just South of the Egyptians, Sudanese Nubians
used fermenting beer to create antibiotics. During the fermentation process they produced
the antibiotic tetracycline and used it to treat bacterial infections 2000 years before
Alexander Flemming discovered penicillin. Over in China the earliest finds
of beer making are from 7,000 BCE, and it was probably fermented
from rice, berries and honey. During the Shang dynasty, the palace had official
brewers and taverns popped up in large cities. Di Xin, the last emperor of the
Shang dynasty might have liked beer a bit too much. One of his parties
had a lake of beer and meat forest, and he "made men and women chase each other
about quite naked, and had drinking bouts the whole night long.". The people eventually
turned on him and the royal palace with Di Xin inside it was burned. The Shang dynasty quickly
collapsed and many blamed it on the drinking. Up in Scandinavia beer and mead, a drink made
with fermented honey, played an important part in diplomacy, marriages, and funerals. Communal
drinking from a single cup was also a thing. They even had triple cups to make things easier. This
helped people build strong bonds with each other. Some Norse warriors, known as berserkers
which means bear-shirt, were said to enter a sort of trance to increase strength during
battle. Scholars think they did this by mixing psychoactive plants into their beer or
mead. Which pumped them up for battle but also caused hallucinations, delirium,
seizures, coma, and sometimes...death. Some researchers believe that
the Berserker hallucinogenic might have been henbane. This plant was found
all across European archaeological sites, like Skara Brae, a Neolithic site and
ancient brewery from around 3,000 BCE. The Celts also seemed to have used
henbane in their beer. Unfortunately, most of what we know about the Celtic beer
comes from Roman sources, who hated beer. But the wine-loving Romans have more
to do with beer than you might think. The words Beer came to us from the word
"bier", from old Germanic languages which might come from an older Germanic
word “beura”. But others scholars believe "bier" got to German via the Latin word
biber, which means a drink or a beverage. Today most counties use a word that sounds
like beer. But Spanish speakers decided to be awkward and use cerveza which came
from the language of beer-hating Romans, Latin and probably comes from the Roman goddess
of growth Ceres, which is where the word cereal comes from. Or from a Celtic word for beer
that morphed into cervisia then cerveza. In Early English Ale was the common word for beer
and is still the word for beer in Scandinavia as Øl and the Baltics as Alus, beer only
took over as a word in English later. With the fall of the Roman empire in the 5th
century CE, the invasion of the germanic tribes, and the rise of the Catholic Church, beer
gained a new role in everyday European life. One catholic bishop, noted while visiting the
Rhine river region, that the people drank "like mad [men] and that one has to thank the
Lord to survive their drinking bouts". The Church was hopeless about getting
them to quit their "mad" drinking, so it embraced it instead. They matched the
pagan festivities to Christian holidays, pairing traditions like the Germanic
Yule with Christmas, or the bonfire solstice rituals with Saint John's Day and
monks became some of the best beer brewers. Christian Monks also travelled a lot.
It is thanks to the Flemish monk, William of Rubruck that we know that
the Mongols drank beer in style. In 1253 William entered Karakorum, the capital
city of the Mongol empire at that time. He was dazzled by the Khan's fountain.
It was a magnificent silver tree, with silver serpents coiling around it. On its
base there were 4 lions also made of silver, each of them spewing mare milk. From the
branches of the tree 4 pipes poured grape wine, fermented mare milk, rice beer and honey
mead into basins for drinkers to enjoy. In Medieval Europe women were the primary
brewers and in England they were called Alewives. As cities grew Alewives began making
a profit from selling beer. Seeing this, men quickly decided to take over brewing.
Unlike their wives, men could take out loans and set up guilds to protect their business
and regulate the market in their favour. Between the 13th and 15th centuries alewives
were depicted with gross physical features and some were even charged with witchcraft and
alewives were pushed out of the beer business and men took over. Up until the 13th century, beer was
brewed with GRUIT, not that Groot! A combination of herbs and spices that added
flavour and helped preserve the beer longer. So you didn't have to drink it as soon
as it was fermented like back in Sumeria. Taxing gruit became an effective way
to regulate and tax beer production. But Bavarians and Bohemians found an alternative
to gruit: hops. Hops are these terrifying looking plants. They added bitterness and extra flavours
to beer, but more importantly hops were cheap, untaxed and they’re antimicrobial effects
preserved beer much longer than Gruit could. The longer the beer lasts, the further
it can travel. Some cities became major beer exporters. By the 1400s,
the city of Hamburg had 15-20 thousand people but was producing an average
of 30 million litres of hopped beer per year. Laws were soon passed to regulate beer production.
The most famous one being the 1516 REINHEITSGEBOT, or German purity law, saying the only ingredients
allowed for making beer were barley, hops and water. Today 500 years later the Reinheitsgebot
still influences how beer in Germany is produced. In 1553 Bavaria passed a law
forbidding brewing during Summer, saying the weather would spoil the beer. Brewing
started in March, and they would leave it to ferment in very cool caves until September,
and so Märzenbier or March Beer was born. In 1810, there was a huge public party in
honour of the wedding of prince Ludwig of Bavaria and princess Therese. They had parades,
horse races, and lots of beer. The wedding was in Munich in October, pairing perfectly
with the opening of the Märzenbier barrels. It was such a success that they decided
to repeat the celebrations every October and it became known as Oktoberfest. Today
Oktoberfest runs from mid-September to October and every year the Munich
Oktoberfest attracts more than 6 million visitors, consuming more than 7 million
litres of beer, a lot of it being Märzenbier. On the other side of the ocean at
least since the 4th century BCE Andean societies were brewing their
own maize beers that today we call CHICHA. Andean women chewed the maize to start
the fermentation process and then brewed the beer. Chicha was used to celebrate
harvests, the new year, weddings, and funerals. They
offered Chicha to the Sun, and poured it over the ground during festivals
because the gods always got the first sip. The Inca civilisation uniquely functioned without
currency or markets. The citizens paid taxes by giving their labour to the state and they got
all of their basic necessities from state-owned warehouses. The empire hosted massive feasts with
thousands of litres of Chica, to repay people for their service to the state. The Inca feasting
economy created an insatiable demand for beer. In the Quechua language, the city of Cuzco, the Inca
capital city, was called AKHA MAMA, meaning chicha mother. The Inca Empire invested in expanding
maize production by opening up new areas to farm, creating colonies in fertile regions, and
improving technology. Maize production skyrocketed under the Inca and their system of roads was so
well developed that they could easily distribute and store grain across their mountainous country,
one of the largest empires on Earth at the time. When the Spanish conquered the region they tried
to ban Chicha production but Andean women managed to keep it alive and thanks to them today you
can sip this ancient drink across South America. In 18th century colonial America during
the Revolutionary War against Britain, American soldiers' daily rations included
about 1 liter of beer. And in 1780, general George Washington granted his troops
their one winter holiday. The 17th of March, to celebrate St Patrick's feast, a considerable
percentage of the army at the time was Irish. With the mass migration of poor Irish people to
America in the 19th century, Saint Patrick's day celebrations grew and grew. Today more than half
of the US population celebrates it. The city of Chicago even dyes its river green. In Ireland we
don't dye the rivers green but there are parades, dances, drinking, and cultural events like
Seachtain na Gaeilge or Irish Language Week. Worldwide, more than 13 million pints of Guinness, Ireland’s famous stout beer,
are served on St. Patrick's Day. Arthur Guinness was part of a group of pioneers
that revolutionized brewing during the industrial revolution. He decided to open his own
brewery at St. James’ Gate Dublin in 1759. Signing a famous 9,000 year lease for
£45 per year. Quite annoying because I used to live next door to this brewery
and my rent was much higher than £45!! Guinness was an international success
and was shipped all over the world. The first brewery abroad opened in 1963 in
Nigeria, only two years after the country became independent. Guinness is so popular there
that some Nigerians think of Guinness as their national beer and they are the world’s
second largest consumer of Guinness. In Ireland up until quite recently
Guinness was associated with good health. For many years doctors prescribed
Guinness to postoperative patients, blood donors, and pregnant women,
believing it was rich in iron. While industrial scale brewing made
Arthur Guinnees other factory-owners rich, many workers were crushed
by the industrial malt mill, drowned in beer vats or asphyxiated
by the CO2 generated by fermentation. London had a deadly incident in 1814, when a 6.7m
tall (22 foot) wooden vat filled with porter beer burst. The half a million liters beer "tsunami"
flooded a neighbourhood and killed 8 people. But the Industrial revolution didn't just affect
the brewing process, it changed the palate too. During the Industrial Revolution the deep, rich,
heavy porters and stouts of the working class were all the rage but then BOOM...IMPERIALISM. Tea
and coffee took over Europe as they poured in from overseas colonies and the emerging Middle Classes
developed a taste for bitter drinks. Light and bitter Pale beers rose in popularity. AND THEN
IMPERIALISM STRIKES AGAIN! On the other side of the planet, the British Indian army waited
impatiently in the Indian heat for their beer. Dark beers kept arriving stale and skunky. After
six months of rocking at the bottom of a ship, what did they expect? Then some companies tried
sending some paler beer packed with hops, which, as we have seen, is a powerful
preservative. The beer was, not very creatively🙄, named
Indian Pale Ale, or IPA for short. Let's go up to 19th century China and see what's
going on..BOOM IMPERIALISM STRIKETH YET AGAIN! In 1897, Imperial German naval troops
went to the other side of the planet to seize the Chinese fort at Tsingtao,. The
Germans built a small village near the fort, and by 1903 the city was attracting investors.
Among them were the founders of Germania Brewery, which later became Tsingtao Brewery. In
the beginning, Tsingtao Beer was brewed in accordance with the German Reinheitsgebot (Purity
Law), but after the company was privatized in the 1990s Tsingtao added rice to the beer. Nowadays,
Tsingtao is the second largest brewery in China, with more than 17% of the domestic market,
and 4.4% of the global beer production. Germany also changed the beer
history of another country. In the 19th century, Germans went to America
by the hundreds of thousands. By the end of the century there were an estimated
2.8 million Germans living in the US. Adolphus Busch was one of them. He partnered
with Eberhard Anheuser, to establish what would become the biggest beer company in the world:
Anheuser-Busch. Busch made many improvements in beer production including pasteurization
and refrigeration. After a trip to Bohemia, the modern Czech Republic, he developed Budweiser,
the biggest beer brand in the world. Which kind of annoyed the Czechs who had a beer already called
Budweiser for about 800 years. The dispute between Budweiser and...Budweiser is why the American
Budweiser is called just BUD in Europe. Today Anheuser-Busch sales exceed 52 billion dollars
a year, nearly 30% of the world market. By the end of the 19th century drunkenness was
becoming a social problem in the United States and the Americans reacted harshly. From 1920
until 1933, alcoholic beverages were outlawed across the US. Companies that had made fortunes
in the decades before were suddenly struggling to survive, selling anything from malt
extract and "tonics" to ice-creams. When Prohibition ended and the market picked
up again after the end of World War II, almost all small breweries had died out. Beer brewing was now in the hands of gigantic
corporations. Beer corporations became masters of the new science of marketing and soon TV
sets were filled with beer advertisements and refrigerators were stocked with cold beer that was
cheap, bottled, mass-produced, and mass-marketed. In the last 20 years small breweries
have made a comeback. Brewing their own unique beers. Beer drinkers can
now enjoy beer of all flavours, you can even drink a beer called GILGAMASH
based on the earliest beers brewed in Sumeria. Since 2010 an average 190 billion liters of beer
have been produced every year. It is the most consumed beverage on Earth after water and tea.
And each time a pint is raised to welcome friends, to wish good health, to toast a new
marriage, or to remember lost loved ones, it is an act that has been repeated by humans
every day for the last 10,000 years. Today maybe we don’t believe beer connects us with the
gods, but there is still some magic in it. Although if you want to use beer to feel connected to the gods again you can head to Guatemala
and share a cigarette or a beer with Maximon a Maya Folk saint. Evan from the channel Rare
Earth did just that in this video over on Nebula. Nebula is a video platform that Cogito
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