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KULTUR & NÖJE
Artikel
av Thomas Laurits Aabo
publicerad 17 jan 2003 kl. 10.26:
Öl
Vår civilisations födelse.
Del 1.
The dawn of beer.
There are scientists that say that man left the old nomadic lifestyle and became stationary due to beer. A stationary lifestyle could better support the work processes involved, growing crops etc, for producing this nourishing and slightly intoxicating beverage.
Other scientists says that the growing of crops was purely based on reasons for producing beer - the means for, and idea about, using crops for making bread came - according to the same scientists much later. And the reasons for producing beer should not be seen so much as for intoxication, the nourishment aspect of beer is probably a very important reason for our forefathers choice back in the dawn of agriculrural civilisation.
One can conclude that these statements at least point to the fact that beer is a very, very old invention. An invention that might have been a cause for the start of building our modern civilisation - stationary lives means new social structures, bigger groups of people can become tribes and clans, greater demands for a ordered society.
The beer we know today, however, are not they same beer as the egyptians and babylonians praise in the hitherto discovered historical records.
The beer we know today have probably very little in common with their beer, it has undergone many changes since the pharaoes and rulers of Babylon. Main ingredients have changed and so have the fruits and other means to make it a tasty drink, as well as the changes in the process of producing beer.
The drinking belts of Europe
The historical implications in the taste for different beverages is clearly shown in the three drinking regions, beer, wine and spirits, that Europe consists of today. The south and southwest winebelt was founded during the same time as Greece play a central role, before the roman empire, in world history. The reasons for this, of course, is the spread of the grapes from the south to the areas that today are parts of the winebelt.
The winebelts northern border is approxiamately The English channel, through Belgium, the German border to France, Italy's northern border and from thereon eastward.
The beer belt consists of the British isles and Ireland, parts of Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Germany, most of Switzerland, Austria, the Chech and Slovakian republics, and Slovenia.
North and east of the beerbelt is the spriritbelt that consists of Scandinavia (excluding Denmark), the Baltic states, Russia, main parts of Poland down to the Black sea.
The historical reason for this region not being included in the beer belt is in part that they did not have the facilities, climatic ones, to produce the ingredients needed for producing a good beer. When the beer belt evolved the spirit belt had to stick to Mead, the honey based intoxicating beverage.
Spirits later to exchange mead.
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