Beer saves the World

Did you catch the new special on Discovery Channel called "How Beer Saved the World"? If the answer is yes, you probably know what I am going to talk about. If not, do yourself a favor and either find someone who saved it, or catch a rerun. Do yourself a favor though, if you haven't seen it, do so before you continue reading, as I don't want to spoil anything for you.

Now that you've seen the show, it's safe to talk about it. To think, the beer that many people love helped create so many different things! In the large scheme of things, that's a pretty amazing feat for one beverage. (I know, there's different types of beers. That's not the point.)

According to this show, beer is the basis for civilization as we know it. To think, men decided to domesticate because of this beverage, Nomads (hunters/ gatherers) stumbled upon beer by accident after leaving out barley during a rainy season. One lucky nomad was bold enough to taste the first beer. Oh man, what a treat that would have been! After tasting this, it was decided more needed to be made, so man decided to stay in one place for more than just a few days.

According to Discover, beer then becomes one of the most precious, if not the most precious things for man; people work for it, trade it for other goods, and drink it to get their nutrition. Beer does it all! In fact, beer was so important, that beer was used to help give man the energy to build the pyramids. Each person building was alloted a gallon of beer a dar when building the pyramids with the average pyramid needing over 3 million  gallons of beer to be consumed for it to be built. (I don't know about you, but I've done work for beer before; certainly not a gallon of beer though). Beer was so precious that it was used as currency for the ancient Egyptians.

Civilized man ran in to an unforeseen problem though, they began to contaminate their water supply with garbage and animal by-products. This contamination lead to many folks getting sick in the middle ages. The solution to this problem was, of course, beer. These folks realized that by using the water to make beer, they were making it safe to drink. They did not realize that boiling water killed the bacteria, but rather thought that  something in the beer made it safe. This meant that, in order to be healthy, one must consume beer. This included men, women, and children. Everyone drank beer! (What a fun concept, although life in the Middle Ages was very tough). During this time, beer was life blood.

Simply by looking at what beer was believed to do during some very tough times, but beer was also responsible for revolutions! When America's fore fathers came to America, they decided to land where they did because they had run out of beer. To think, things in our history books could have been very different if they just had more beer! Then, to make things more interesting, the revolution really gained momentum over pints of beer in the local taverns. No beer, probably no revolution!

This show really showed what beer has done for man and civilization. An even crazier idea is that beer was the root of capitalism and commerce. The idea that because of beer, many inventions, such as math, are rumored to have to have been invented!

I tell you all this because I thought the show was very well done. Some folks may have already known some of this information, but now the masses now know some of these awesome beer related facts! Beer has played a tremendous role in man kind and I imagine it will continue to play a significant role.