History of alcoholic beverages
Purposeful production of alcoholic beverages is common and often reflects cultural and religious peculiarities as much as geographical and sociological conditions.
Discovery of late Stone Age jugs suggest that intentionally fermented beverages existed at least as early as the Neolithic period.
Archaeological record
The ability to metabolize alcohol likely predates humanity with primates eating fermenting fruit.The oldest verifiable brewery has been found in a prehistoric burial site in a cave near Haifa in modern-day Israel. Researchers have found residue of 13,000-year-old beer that they think might have been used for ritual feasts to honor the dead. The traces of a wheat-and-barley-based alcohol were found in stone mortars carved into the cave floor. Some have proposed that alcoholic drinks predated agriculture and it was the desire for alcoholic drinks that led to agriculture and civilization.
As early as 7000 BC, chemical analysis of jars from the Neolithic village Jiahu in the Henan province of northern China revealed traces of a mixed fermented beverage. According to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in December 2004, chemical analysis of the residue confirmed that a fermented drink made of grapes, hawthorn berries, honey, and rice was being produced in 7000–6650 BC.
This is approximately the time when barley beer and grape wine were beginning to be made in the Middle East.
Evidence of alcoholic beverages has also been found dating from 5400 to 5000 BC in Hajji Firuz Tepe in Iran, 3150 BC in ancient Egypt, 3000 BC in Babylon, 2000 BC in pre-Hispanic Mexico and 1500 BC in Sudan. According to Guinness, the earliest firm evidence of wine production dates back to 6000 BC in Georgia.
The medicinal use of alcohol was mentioned in Sumerian and Egyptian texts dating from about 2100 BC. The Hebrew Bible recommends giving alcoholic drinks to those who are dying or depressed, so that they can forget their misery.
In 55 BC, the Romans took notice of an alcoholic cider being made in Britain using native apples. It quickly became popular and was imported back to the continent where it spread rapidly. People in Northern Spain were making cider around the same time period. Celtic people were known to have been making types of alcoholic cider as early as 3000 BC.
Wine was consumed in Classical Greece at breakfast or at symposia, and in the 1st century BC it was part of the diet of most Roman citizens. Both the Greeks and the Romans generally drank diluted wine.
In Europe during the Middle Ages, beer, often of very low strength, was an everyday drink for all classes and ages of people. A document from that time mentions nuns having an allowance of six pints of ale each day. Cider and pomace wine were also widely available; grape wine was the prerogative of the higher classes.
By the time the Europeans reached the Americas in the 15th century, several native civilizations had developed alcoholic beverages. According to a post-conquest Aztec document, consumption of the local "wine" was generally restricted to religious ceremonies but was freely allowed to those who were older than 70 years. The natives of South America produced a beer-like beverage from cassava or maize, which had to be chewed before fermentation in order to turn the starch into sugar. This chewing technique was also used in ancient Japan to make sake from rice and other starchy crops.
Ancient period
Ancient China
The earliest evidence of wine was found in what is now China, where jars from Jiahu which date to about 7000 BC were discovered. This early rice wine was produced by fermenting rice, honey, and fruit. What later developed into Chinese civilization grew up along the more northerly Yellow River and fermented a kind of huangjiu from millet. The Zhou attached great importance to alcohol and ascribed the loss of the mandate of Heaven by the earlier Xia and Shang as largely due to their dissolute and alcoholic emperors. An edict ascribed to BC makes it clear that the use of alcohol in moderation was believed to be prescribed by heaven.Unlike the traditions in Europe and the Middle East, China abandoned the production of grape wine before the advent of writing and, under the Han, abandoned beer in favor of huangjiu and other forms of rice wine. These naturally fermented to a strength of about 20% ABV; they were usually consumed warmed and frequently flavored with additives as part of traditional Chinese medicine. They considered it spiritual food and extensive documentary evidence attests to the important role it played in religious life. "In ancient times people always drank when holding a memorial ceremony, offering sacrifices to gods or their ancestors, pledging resolution before going into battle, celebrating victory, before feuding and official executions, for taking an oath of allegiance, while attending the ceremonies of birth, marriage, reunions, departures, death, and festival banquets." Marco Polo's 14th century record indicates grain and rice wine were drunk daily and were one of the treasury's biggest sources of income.
Alcoholic beverages were widely used in all segments of Chinese society, were used as a source of inspiration, were important for hospitality, were considered an antidote for fatigue, and were sometimes misused. Laws against making wine were enacted and repealed forty-one times between 1100 BC and AD 1400. However, a commentator writing around 650 BC asserted that people "will not do without beer. To prohibit it and secure total abstinence from it is beyond the power even of sages. Hence, therefore, we have warnings on the abuse of it."
The Chinese may have independently developed the process of distillation in the early centuries of the Common Era, during the Eastern Han dynasty.
Ancient Persia (or Ancient Iran)
A major step forward in our understanding of Neolithic winemaking came from the analysis of a yellowish residue excavated by Mary M. Voigt at the site of Hajji Firuz Tepe in the northern Zagros Mountains of Iran. The jar that once contained wine, with a volume of about 9 liters was found together with five similar jars embedded in the earthen floor along one wall of a "kitchen" of a Neolithic mudbrick building, dated to c. 5400–5000 BC. In such communities, winemaking was the best technology they had for storing highly perishable grapes, although whether the resulting beverage was intended for intoxication as well as nourishment is not known.Ancient Sumer
Archaeological finds as well as ancient documentation serve as testimony to the popularity and abundance of alcohol in the Sumerian society. Access to alcohol was regulated, the social elite indulged in it and it served as sacrificial offerings to the gods. In Sumerian culture alcohol was also a means for happiness. In the epic of Gilgamesh, Enkidu the wild man drinks seven jugs of beer, becomes elated and sings with joy. Other characters routinely drink water, but drink alcohol when celebrating. During the new year celebrations, the ceremonial reenactment of the drunken union between the king of Uruk and the high priestess of Ishtar, the goddess of procreation, symbolized the genesis of Ninkasi, the beer goddess. A hymn to Ninkasi gives a detailed description of hash production in Sumer, involving the fermentation of bread and the addition of grapes and honey, resulting in an unfiltered brew drunk through straws.Ancient Egypt
dates from the beginning of civilization in ancient Egypt, and alcoholic beverages were very important at that time. Egyptian brewing began in the city of Hierakonpolis around 3400 BC; its ruins contain the remains of the world's oldest brewery, which was capable of producing up to three hundred gallons per day of beer.Wine was a symbol of power and was imported from abroad, hence it was reserved for royalty and the social elite, while beer was the drink of common society. In the tomb of the Scorpion king, who ruled Hierakonpolis when the brewery was built, approximately 700 wine jars imported from the southern Levant were unearthed. Financial documents recorded that the daily ration of beer for the workers who built the pyramids of Giza was nearly 4 litres, and modern reproductions of the ancient recipe produced a brew weighed in at 5 percent ABV, the same as that of the modern day pint.
Despite the many Egyptian sources describing brewing methods, very few discuss intoxication. However, an annual celebration of the "Drunkenness of Hathor" commemorated the intoxication of the goddess Sekhmet/Hathor with beer disguised as blood by other gods, causing her to fall into a drunken stupor and allowing them to take control over creation, an act which prevented her from exterminating humanity. In honor of this deed a red coloured alcohol was drunk in large quantities during the festival causing similar intoxicated stupors.
Osiris, as opposed to other local and familial gods, was worshiped throughout Egypt and was believed to be the god of the dead, of life, of vegetable regeneration, and of wine, as his death and resurrection were compared to the cycle of withering and regrowth of the vine during the winter and spring. The Oag festival, dedicated to Osiris, was marked by the drinking of wine, and during the late dynastic period the devotees of Osiris would offer prayers and conduct rituals, after which they would drink wine and consume bread, believing that they had been transubstantiated in to the flesh and blood of Osiris. Multiple amphorae were discovered in the graves of pharaohs and elites as provisions for the afterlife and as offerings to Osiris, commonly with labels detailing their origin, maker, and date. Over time, labels eventually included assessments of quality as well, such as "good," "very good," or "very very good," alongside provenance, and it was believed that certain vintages improved with age. Archaeological findings reveal that some wines buried with their owners were several decades old, exceeding the average life expectancy, and therefore assumed to have outlived their creators.
Both beer and wine were deified and offered to gods. Cellars and wine presses even had a god whose hieroglyph was a winepress. The ancient Egyptians made at least 17 types of beer and at least 24 varieties of wine. The most common type of beer was known as hqt. Beer was the drink of common laborers; financial accounts report that the Giza pyramid builders were allotted a daily beer ration of one and one-third gallons. Alcoholic beverages were used for pleasure, nutrition, medicine, ritual, remuneration, and funerary purposes. The latter involved storing the beverages in tombs of the deceased for their use in the after-life.
Numerous accounts of the period stressed the importance of moderation, and these norms were both secular and religious. While Egyptians did not generally appear to define drunkenness as a problem, they warned against taverns and excessive drinking. After reviewing extensive evidence regarding the widespread but generally moderate use of alcoholic beverages, the nutritional biochemist and historian William J. Darby makes a most important observation: all these accounts are warped by the fact that moderate users "were overshadowed by their more boisterous counterparts who added 'color' to history." Thus, the intemperate use of alcohol throughout history receives a disproportionate amount of attention. Those who excessively use alcohol cause problems, draw attention to themselves, are highly visible and cause legislation to be enacted. The vast majority of drinkers, who neither experience nor cause difficulties, are not noteworthy. Consequently, observers and writers largely ignore moderation.
Evidence of distillation comes from alchemists working in Alexandria, Roman Egypt, in the 1st century AD. Distilled water has been known since at least c. 200 AD, when Alexander of Aphrodisias described the process.