Europe drank wine on a scale it is difficult to conceive of; our ancestors must have been in a perpetual fuddle.Johnson and Robinson go on to say that with the later inventions of beer and tea, wine finally had some competition. And that's all fine information about the history of wine, but today we have a word for someone who gets all their liquid in the form of wine: an alcoholic.
Were our ancestors used to a constantly elevated BAC? Sure. Did it affect their productivity? I would guess that it did. I can't see how it couldn't have. Which brings me to my point:
Did the invention of purified municipal water supplies lead to the acceleration of technology that characterizes the modern age? After millenia of inebriation, did western society have a nice greasy lunch and get to work one Monday?
Jared Diamond would say no, no, it had everything to do with Europe's grains and large mammals and so on, but I prefer my theory.
Safe water supplies certainly reduced the number of urinary tract problems. Bladder stones used to be common, and were probably due to dehydration. Boiling water for tea kills the germs and the infusion masks the taste and color of impure water. But tea was a luxury for most because of the cost of transportation. An interesting question is why people didn't routinely boil drinking water. I'll look into that.
ReplyDeleteI imagine drinking water wasn't normally boiled because it'd take too much fuel. Every piece of firewood had to be gathered by hand, if you lived in the country, or paid for, if in the city.
ReplyDeleteRemember that the Romans had clean drinking water (pressurized on tap!) due to the aquaducts. The Egyptians' main beverage of choice was beer. Even the peoples of the Bible used wells.
ReplyDeleteEven when Romans drank wine (which they certainly did a lot of) it was typically flavored with spices and rather low in alcoholic content. However, some of it contained lead, used a flavoring, a preservative and a container lining.