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Squalid posted:There's an alternative to malting: the enzymes in saliva produce the same effect. Many traditional methods of fermentation in Latin America still involve chewing and spitting the grain during one phase of production. I wonder how the hell they figured that out. People like to chew things, maybe? I can imagine a bunch of dudes sitting around chewing on grain doing some menial task like and spitting them out into a repository of some kind so as not to make a mess. A day or two later someone notices it smells like those wild fruits everyone loves to eat and bam they figured it out.
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Dec 14, 2016 04:24
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Thanks to this thread I knew all about the bicameral mind when it came up in Westworld. The internet is good for something after all!  Now hopefully in season two they'll go into where Atlantis was and whether or not Romans lived in China.
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Dec 14, 2016 05:13
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packetmantis posted:Thanks to this thread I knew all about the bicameral mind when it came up in Westworld. The internet is good for something after all! It'll be a Roman settlement in an unspecified location and instead of Ed Harris it'll be Chow Yun Fat rolling with some extra pounds playing as Lu Bu. Mid season reveal being that the invasion of Lixian exits the planning phase and comes into effect, season finale is a cerebral mixture of flashbacks and death scenes involving anyone who went after Lu Bu, with the final death coming with the realization of the maxim: do not pursue Lu Bu.
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Dec 14, 2016 05:39
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loving bicameral mind goddamnit.
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Dec 14, 2016 07:02
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:loving bicameral mind goddamnit. PYF Historical Fun Fact had a great detour through that a month or two ago. It's a shame, because the guy who did it had some really fascinating and informative posts before he went off the deep end.
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Dec 14, 2016 09:43
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:loving bicameral mind goddamnit. Every year the winner of The Voice becomes everybody's internal monologue. That's how it works.
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Dec 14, 2016 18:17
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Squalid posted:We know for sure hunter gatherers produced fermented beverages from wild fruit so I don't see why producing it from grain is much more of a stretch. In the southwest US saguaro fruit was traditionally brewed into wine, I'm sure people were doing similar things in Europe Someone correct me if I am wrong, but I don't think the issue is that we don't believe grains were brewed into beer but rather whats up for debate is the idea of what grains were first grown for, food or alcohol.
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Dec 15, 2016 09:04
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Telsa Cola posted:Someone correct me if I am wrong, but I don't think the issue is that we don't believe grains were brewed into beer but rather whats up for debate is the idea of what grains were first grown for, food or alcohol. I think it's more complex than even that. The question is really what grains were first grown for food and which first for alcohol and given the diversity of human civilization and development, I'd wager that in some societies food came first and alcohol second and in others vice versa.
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Dec 15, 2016 19:48
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and in some instances, it was both.
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Dec 15, 2016 19:54
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The first civil war ever fought occurred after a bad harvest when only a small portion of grain survived and one faction wanted to make bread and the other beer.
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Dec 15, 2016 21:11
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The bread-beer-porridge-pasta thing is all quite fascinating to me. So many variables on what becomes the easist and most convenient thing to do with your starchy stuff.
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Dec 15, 2016 23:32
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Corn's crazy because who the gently caress figured out soaking in lye to release nutrients?
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Dec 16, 2016 02:20
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Grand Fromage posted:Corn's crazy because who the gently caress figured out soaking in lye to release nutrients? It's limewater mostly, much of the geology in the area is limestone and its powdery as poo poo and gets everywhere (and then sets like cement) when disturbed so I can see it happening accidentally. Edit: Its a mixture of slaked lime and ash. Those would be two major by products of cooking Limestone in a wet environment so with all the key ingredients being readily available and floating around in close proximity I can see it happening. Telsa Cola fucked around with this message at 03:38 on Dec 16, 2016 |
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Dec 16, 2016 03:24
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Telsa Cola posted:It's limewater mostly, much of the geology in the area is limestone and its powdery as poo poo and gets everywhere (and then sets like cement) when disturbed most of so I can see it happening accidentally. Ah that makes sense. The leap to realizing it's necessary without any real scientific method or understanding of chemistry or nutrition or anything is still impressive though.
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Dec 16, 2016 03:36
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Grand Fromage posted:Ah that makes sense. The leap to realizing it's necessary without any real scientific method or understanding of chemistry or nutrition or anything is still impressive though. This is tentative but they honestly might not have realized it until after they started doing it, apparently it makes the corn easier to process and taste and smell better so there are easily noticeable benefits to doing it. Ill try to pin down some sources on that when I no longer am dying from finals.
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Dec 16, 2016 03:45
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:loving bicameral mind goddamnit. To be fair, in the show they specifically say the theory is discredited, but was still useful for inspiration when they were constructing their artificial minds. Back on topic, is anyone familiar with this? I listened to a Youtube lecture this guy did on the subject that was pretty interesting.
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Dec 16, 2016 04:16
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Grand Fromage posted:Ah that makes sense. The leap to realizing it's necessary without any real scientific method or understanding of chemistry or nutrition or anything is still impressive though. It was a bold man that spent thousands of years turning a grass into a staple crop you have to treat with chemicals just to eat. Oysters are easy.
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Dec 16, 2016 08:00
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Atlas Hugged posted:I think it's more complex than even that. The question is really what grains were first grown for food and which first for alcohol and given the diversity of human civilization and development, I'd wager that in some societies food came first and alcohol second and in others vice versa. That's where I sit. Problem is barley is the best grain for beer (still used to this day because it has the most sugars looked inside, obviously other grains are added, wheat, or oats or rice), but barley is the predominate grain because it has the most sugar. Also barley is the oldest domesticated grain in human civilisation IIRC. Native to the middle east area and used as a food source for 8000 years or more because it's there, is high is energy and all the good things that make it good for beer. To say it was used for beer first seems weird to me as I think beer was an accident that took many many things to go right. I think beer came about through the fact they were mixing barley with water as a food, and sometimes you got beer if it was neglected, but mostly you got horrible stuff if neglected. Lots of trial and error or thrown out spoiled mixes must have happened. I mean I can't see the point of anyone drinking poo poo when they could have fruit based alcohol, or that they could have various herbs to get you high. Beer also travels very very badly. There's a reason why even 100 years ago every town or even pub had it's own brewery, why IPAs exist due to them having to ship it overseas, why every recent modern overseas colony preferred rum. Beer just doesn't travel. I only weighed in on the topic because at the time I was reading I'd just decided to throw out an ale brewed in august - got too much air/oxygen in it as I had to stir it a couple of times as the yeast was a highly flocculating type and just dropped out ~16C. It's loving terrible even aged. Also I was bottling a saison a few weeks ago and drat that was sour, tart and tastes bad. It's working out fine now 3 weeks in the fridge but if you were nomadic and without a fridge there's no way you'd hold onto that unless you had knowledge it would all work out OK in the end. I kind of get the brewed for special occasions, like early civilization had a nomadic lifestyle but started to come together for annual meeting points. But that would mean brewing there, burying the grain with water and either malting or enzymes, then keeping it reasonably air tight and cool so it didn't spoil. That could have happened which is why I didn't argue the point. But carrying beer around or doing a quick 2 week brew or whatever would not have happened IMO, they would have been people already static in one place to stuff around with that. Why bother when there's plant and poo poo you can get high on, or some fermenting fruit? Sorry for stopping my normal lurking but as an aussie I can't help but comment if beer is mentioned, plus I've been homebrewing for at least 10 years. E: I think sometimes my error here is equating ancient beer to modern beer so I may throw out what ancient people considered acceptable, but bacteria and air and other things I mentioned are still constant and would definitely make even ancient beer less appealing to herbs that got you high or fruit wines. Beer was a thing that people tried really hard to perfect after they had their food source worked out IMO. Saying all that I still apologize because I coming across as some retarded lindybeige. Fo3 fucked around with this message at 14:29 on Dec 16, 2016 |
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Dec 16, 2016 14:19
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Fo3 posted:That's where I sit. Problem is barley is the best grain for beer (still used to this day because it has the most sugars looked inside, obviously other grains are added, wheat, or oats or rice), but barley is the predominate grain because it has the most sugar. Its a good post. Don't apologize for not lurking. 
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Dec 16, 2016 14:40
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Fo3 posted:That's where I sit. Problem is barley is the best grain for beer (still used to this day because it has the most sugars looked inside, obviously other grains are added, wheat, or oats or rice), but barley is the predominate grain because it has the most sugar. This is a fantastic post and I share the other poster's opinion that you shouldn't apologize for not lurking especially when it comes with a sweet beer post like this. FWIW I'd have to say your explanation sounds far more plausible than the other way round. Even with the modern palate being something that is presumably adjusted to things that aren't what they were 15k years ago, that's still just stuff we've become accustomed to and it's probably safe to say that bad-tasting beer brewed today would have tasted bad to the first farmers in the fertile crescent. What I'd love to see, along these lines, is some writing on the discovery/development of tea and/or coffee as drinks. I imagine the whole caffeine thing caught on quickly even if it was just "drink this stuff, you get zippy" at first. Tea I can see since it was presumably dried leaves thrown in water and likely a situation where the leaves were just chewed before someone thought to just throw them in water, but with coffee you've got to process the cherries into usable beans beforehand and I'm not sure how someone got to that point.
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Dec 16, 2016 16:13
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FAUXTON posted:What I'd love to see, along these lines, is some writing on the discovery/development of tea and/or coffee as drinks. I imagine the whole caffeine thing caught on quickly even if it was just "drink this stuff, you get zippy" at first. Tea I can see since it was presumably dried leaves thrown in water and likely a situation where the leaves were just chewed before someone thought to just throw them in water, but with coffee you've got to process the cherries into usable beans beforehand and I'm not sure how someone got to that point. There's a story where it's basically along the lines of this: A man notices birds eating berries off of a shrub and becoming energetic. Intrigued, he eats some of the berries, but they taste pretty gross. In an attempt to improve the taste of the berries he tries roasting them on a fire, but this makes the berries too hard and difficult to eat. In an attempt to soften them back up, he puts the hardened berries in boiling water. Then he drank the hot bean water for some reason and found out it was pretty good, and that he felt energized too. Ta da! Coffee. Obviously the story is 100% made up but it's a more-or-less reasonable way that people could have, over time, figured out how to make coffee through trial and error. Edit: The story reminds me of another thing. Humans could easily observe animals eating certain things which then had different effects on them. Maybe part of the invention of beer was some farmer who found out his livestock got all goofy when they ate the fermented barley he forgot about, and then he decided to try it too since hey, the animal didn't die from it, so why not? Jamwad Hilder fucked around with this message at 16:43 on Dec 16, 2016 |
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Dec 16, 2016 16:39
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Counterpoint - couldn't the stated difficulty of moving something like beer actually serve as a pressure for shifting from a nomadic to a settled lifestyle?
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Dec 16, 2016 16:58
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Fo3 posted:That's where I sit. Problem is barley is the best grain for beer (still used to this day because it has the most sugars looked inside, obviously other grains are added, wheat, or oats or rice), but barley is the predominate grain because it has the most sugar. That's why I quoted the article about the place(s) in Turkey where it appears people settled down and built substantial towns based solely on hunting and gathering. You keep assuming that people had to domesticate plants before they settled down, and the opposite seems to be true. Cities came first (at least in those places), then agriculture. So all of your objections disappear if people are already staying most of the year, if not all year, in one spot with plenty of resources to be gathered. It's then a matter of what prompted them to start planting seeds deliberately - was it a desire for a more stable food supply, or a desire for more of a particular kind of grain that was useful for brewing? No one really knows for sure, but there is evidence suggestive of the latter proposition.
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Dec 16, 2016 17:09
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Getting drunk probably helped with understanding the messages sent by your bicameral mind
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Dec 16, 2016 17:18
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Deteriorata posted:That's why I quoted the article about the place(s) in Turkey where it appears people settled down and built substantial towns based solely on hunting and gathering. You keep assuming that people had to domesticate plants before they settled down, and the opposite seems to be true. Cities came first (at least in those places), then agriculture. As I said, could have happened which is why I didn't argue the point. But you seem to think there was a particular grain for brewing and another for food. The answer is barley for both. It's not disputed, barley is the oldest domesticated grain, for food, and also the one used even to this day for beer. If you're just going get wasted on your own supply, why not plant a crop you don't have to go with the hassle of brewing with? Fo3 fucked around with this message at 17:47 on Dec 16, 2016 |
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Dec 16, 2016 17:38
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Wine was created by the great god Dionysus, and anyone who says otherwise deserves to be torn apart by a group of women led by their own mother.
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Dec 16, 2016 17:48
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Deteriorata posted:That's why I quoted the article about the place(s) in Turkey where it appears people settled down and built substantial towns based solely on hunting and gathering. You keep assuming that people had to domesticate plants before they settled down, and the opposite seems to be true. Cities came first (at least in those places), then agriculture. South Americans also had cities before agriculture, but they relied more on fishing.
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Dec 16, 2016 18:35
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Hogge Wild posted:South Americans also had cities before agriculture, but they relied more on fishing. Same for some pre-colombus tribes in Florida and the pacific northwest (among others, I'm sure). Turns out you can maintain a relatively stable population of 10-20k if you live in a super bountiful area.
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Dec 17, 2016 01:26
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fantastic in plastic posted:Wine was created by the great god Dionysus, and anyone who says otherwise deserves to be torn apart by a group of women led by their own mother. I went and bought some terrible ouzo called dionysus, so this post fueled by that. If we're talking early neolithic period in the middle east, ie around 10000 bce, before even wheat, ovens, breads etc. These hunter gather early settlements had grain storage bins/silos which were for grains, but nothing for brewing has ever been found. It's not suprising because without ovens we are talking about an era that was before pottery. So what were they brewing in? They stored grains, but left nothing to prove they were brewing at all. Maybe there was accidental beers. Like one morning Job was drinking his milled barley and water mix from his stone mortar for an early version of an energy drink. Being late for a hunt he left it on the front step of his house in the sun and it started brewing. His wife didn't want to deal with it after working in the fields all day so she just brought it inside but didn't clean it out. So when he came home a week or more later he had a sample and being a teetottler a tiny sip gave him a buzz. Maybe even someone in the village did something similar that tasted awesome and then they would go around and innoculate other peoples water and barley mix in their 2 cup mortars, experiments continued as a side thing. But proper brewing could have only started after pottery, which makes it long after people started settlements, farming, cultivation and storage of grains. E: chunking a link that I looked at after a quick wiki read http://www.pnas.org/content/106/27/10966.long#sec-1 Fo3 fucked around with this message at 15:50 on Dec 17, 2016 |
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Dec 17, 2016 15:36
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Ainsley McTree posted:Is this food-beer something that still exists today in some form, or does nobody make it anymore? I am morbidly curious to know what ancient Egyptian beermeal would taste like. Tongba is very widely spread in Nepal and Sikkim. It's served as a solid, semi-dry mass of millet (think kasha in terms of consistency, maybe a touch wetter). You don't eat it, but you pour hot water over it, then drink up the resultant thin opaque liquid through a straw. The taste is malty-yeasty-sour. Given that it's made from local yeast in non-sterile conditions, its pretty smooth and inoffensive. In Southern Africa there's a lot of sorghum beer, including a commercially produced variant called shake shake. The texture is very thick and gloopy. Even shake shake (sold by SABMiller) is a living product, and varies a lot depending on how many days old it is, and how it's been treated. It can be very sweet, or really sour and funky, and one litre carton can either have no effect at all, or get you very noticeably buzzed. Porridge-beer is awesome and I don't know why it's not more widespread.
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Dec 17, 2016 17:27
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Fo3 posted:But proper brewing could have only started after pottery, which makes it long after people started settlements, farming, cultivation and storage of grains. Your link directly contradicts your claim. The granaries pre-dated domestication of plants by at least 1000 years. quote:New archaeological work at the PPNA (Pre-Pottery Neolithic A; ≈11,500–10,500 cal B.P.) site of Dhra′, located next to the Dead Sea in Jordan, reveals clear evidence for large-scale storage in sophisticated, purpose-built granaries before the domestication of plants. The granaries pre-dated agriculture, so the question of exactly why they started planting crops on their own is still unanswered. Your continued assertion that brewing could only have come afterward remains false.
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Dec 17, 2016 17:49
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If you want to ignore things to find a debate, I'm not your guy. I'm going to drink a beer and leave you to it. Fo3 fucked around with this message at 18:06 on Dec 17, 2016 |
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Dec 17, 2016 18:02
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You don't need pottery to brew alcohol, you can use animal skin bags. Unsurprisingly this is the method historically preferred by modern nomads in Central Asia when making koumis. You probably wouldn't want to carry it around with you because water is heavy but it would be convenient for seasonal encampments. It's also the kind of thing that won't leave much of an archeological record.
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Dec 17, 2016 18:15
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Fo3 posted:If you want to ignore things to find a debate, I'm not your guy. I'm sorry, my only interest in this is learning what is actually known about the situation. You seem to be making assertions that contradict observable facts, which is the only reason I'm pursuing it. Given that they already had large, stable cities with plentiful food from hunting and gathering, "Hey guys - we need to figure out a way to get more barley so we can brew more beer" seems to be a plausible scenario. You keep asserting that it isn't, and I can't figure out why.
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Dec 17, 2016 18:34
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Why not try making some of those beers for fun?
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Dec 17, 2016 18:54
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I can't remember: has this thread been host to anybody who believed in the Bosnian pyramids?
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Dec 17, 2016 20:55
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I think you mean the Serb pyramids.
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Dec 17, 2016 21:19
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We had Bolivian Atlantis. And 
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Dec 17, 2016 22:20
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:I can't remember: has this thread been host to anybody who believed in the Bosnian pyramids? No, but now I want it to be.
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Dec 17, 2016 23:17
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:I can't remember: has this thread been host to anybody who believed in the Bosnian pyramids? I've read about it years ago but I don't really remember much. Something about a mountain that looks like a pyramid I think? Edit: Quick google search: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-mystery-of-bosnias-ancient-pyramids-148990462/
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Dec 17, 2016 23:38
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