Beer Helped the Rise of Civilization? Homer Simpson Would Say “Yes”.

E. Michael Smith / Wikipedia
An Egyptian wooden model of beer making in ancient Egypt, located at the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum in San Jose, California.


By: Don Caldwell


Could something that you take for granted really have been that important?


Excerpts italicized:


May beer have helped lead to the rise of civilization? It's a possibility, some archaeologists say.


Their argument is that Stone Age farmers were domesticating cereals not so much to fill their stomachs but to lighten their heads, by turning the grains into beer. That has been their take for more than 50 years, and now one archaeologist says the evidence is getting stronger.


Signs that people went to great lengths to obtain grains despite the hard work needed to make them edible, plus the knowledge that feasts were important community-building gatherings, support the idea that cereal grains were being turned into beer, said archaeologist Brian Hayden at Simon Fraser University in Canada.
"Beer is sacred stuff in most traditional societies," said Hayden, who is planning to submit research on the origins of beer to the journal Current Anthropology

The article goes on to talk about how beer helped in the development of communities, traditions, and society in general. Could beer have been that important? Is beer important to you?


Would things that some may consider to be the “finer things in life” (such as beer), really have been that important for helping to create modern society?


Have other things that we take for granted (such as: Television, Internet, Food markets, heating, cars, etc.) , fundamentally changed our societies?


What would life be like without such things? Could you still be happy?


Are these things really that important?

(ORIGINAL LINK) Beer Lubricated the Rise of Civilization, Study Suggests - FoxNews.com