Booze and History

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Cheers! Essay. 700 words, 4-minute read

Göbekli Tepe, gettyimages.com

By Ray Tabler

People who know much more about the subject than I do, and have looked into the matter than I have, determined that large, stone troughs at the Göbekli Tepe archeological site were used to brew beer. Now, there’s a load of ancillary controversy around this site. But this is one finding upon which hats can be hung. Keg parties have been going on for something like 10,000 years.

Did alcohol drive the development of civilization? A valid question, and one which makes sense. Say you’re an ancient hunter gatherer, scratching out a meager existence searching for roots and berries, and occasionally perforating the odd woolly mammoth with a pointy stick. The tribe over the hill has settled own, growing grain and herding goats. An agricultural lifestyle might not be enough to tempt you away from the carefree, migratory existence. But then, those sodbusters go and throw a kegger. Suddenly, those roots and berries aren’t so appealing anymore. To say nothing of how upset mammoth get when you shove a spear up their backside. How rude.

Now, you don’t need civilization to get drunk. Primitive peoples have been enjoying the zing of fermented fruits for a long, long time without having to embark upon the road to progress. Even animals can do it. See the accompanying photo of a Swedish moose who filled up on fermented rotting apples on the ground, and climbed into the tree to get more.

Swedish moose, drunk in tree. NBCNews.com

However, settled agriculture and organized civilization allows the production of alcohol on an industrial scale. Or what passed for industry back then. The ready availability of excess adult beverages made hoeing and weeding crops in the hot sun all day a bit more tolerable. To say nothing of the sanitizing effect of alcohol, as opposed to simply quenching thirst with muddy ditchwater running off the village street.

Brewing beer, and later making wine, requires specialized knowledge. Which promotes the division of labor. That likely leads to a “priest” class, who probably held that knowledge close to the vest. At that point, these are no scheduled stops on the civilization express. Hunter gathering is marginalized, maybe to the point of extinction.

Beyond antimicrobial effects, alcohol has an undeniable lubricating effect when dealing with difficult people. Some people get belligerent when drinking. But most of us become more mellow. Annoying neighbors don’t seem so bad after you’ve had a few. Not a foolproof solution, to be honest. However, history is a statistical game, and the odds favor talking differences out over drinks. This has probably done more to promote world peace than any number of diplomatic agreements. Although, it should be noted that diplomacy is almost always aided by a cocktail party. Perhaps the written word started as a way to document what was agreed to the night before when everyone at the meeting was drunk off their gourd. Not a ridiculous theory. Worth a PhD thesis, at least.

For those who doubt alcohol sometimes drives history, consider the case of the Whiskey Rebellion. In the infant, United States, congress struggled to find funds to pay off government debts from the recently concluded revolutionary war. They hit upon placing a tax on distilled spirits. Farmers beyond the Allegheny mountains were not happy about that. It being common practice to convert excess corn and barely into whiskey for easier transport over the mountains. The farmers began the short-lived Whiskey Rebellion, which was only quelled by armed intervention of federal militia, led by George Washington himself.

The rebellion collapsed. The taxes were grudgingly paid. Two legacies of the Whisky rebellion persist. The federal government was strengthened. The federal tax on alcohol is still in effect to this day. More than 200 years after the original debt was paid off, I might point out. Second, lingering Appalachian dissatisfaction with the alcohol tax fostered a tradition of illicit distilling (moonshining). Moon runners, dodging IRS agents (revenuers) in fast automobiles, gave birth to NASCAR racing.

There you have it. Settled agriculture, civilization, division of labor, the written word, diplomacy, a strong US federal government, and NASCAR. All, arguably, fermented fruits of alcohol, and history under the influence.

END.

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