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Pub Crawl (British History)
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DPCrisp


In: Bedfordshire
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Do we know for sure what was in the Beaker People's beakers?

---

Alcohol is reckoned to have been invented in the Middle East, no doubt. If so, wouldn't it have spread equally sideways?

Alcohol is poisonous and resistance to its effects is genetic. World-leading piss artists in the extreme west of the Old World; light-weights-floored-by-half-a-pint in the extreme east. Guess who's been routinely alcohol-soaked longest?
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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The Far West (Irish, Scotch, Scands) has a real drinking culture. The Middle East hates the stuff. The Far East can take it or leave it. I believe the anti-alcohol gene is completely absent in the West which points to real longevity.

However, let's not forget that brewing beer had a much more important purpose than getting pissed. It guaranteed safe drinking.
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DPCrisp


In: Bedfordshire
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However, let's not forget that brewing beer had a much more important purpose than getting pissed. It guaranteed safe drinking.


Yes, but only in urban populations... which must be significant.

(Is there a public house in every village or a village surrounding every public house?)
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Mick Harper
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One of my themes on ANSAXnet was to point out that nobody likes drinking on their own so the "Celtic" model (lone farmsteads miles from one another which is Orthodoxy's view of British prehistoric settlement patterns) is inherently less plausible than the Merrie England model (everybody living together in villages grouped round a pub which is THOBR's view of affairs).

In which case pubs are thousands of years old, and so are pub-names. But nobody agreed with me.
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DPCrisp


In: Bedfordshire
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the "Celtic" model (lone farmsteads miles from one another which is Orthodoxy's view of British prehistoric settlement patterns)


Almost everyone and everything in the history of the world has lived on untreated water. It can't be bad for you.

The only reason boiling water to make beer or tea was important was that the water supply was made unsafe by the density of human population using it. So people must have been huddled together around rivers -- oh, like we are still -- for long enough for a genetic difference to become well established.

When it comes to mitochondrial DNA, they talk in the order of tens of thousand years per mutation.
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Mick Harper
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Dan is being opaque but I have worked out what I think he means. Living in villages per se does not mess up the water (surely?) but living in cities does. Orthodoxy takes the view that cities date from c. 3250 BC. (in the Middle East).

However (but correct me if I am wrong) beer dates from before this, going back, yeah, unto the Neolithic Revolution and the invention of cereal agriculture (also in the Middle East). So on any reading it is unlikely that beer was invented for the purpose of safe drinking.

I agree that for any kind of alcohol gene to arise and spread round the world it must be way before all this. But then again there's a milk-intolerant gene that's "gone round the world" so I would have thought that all this is a mere genetic accident. Though, yes, technically, I ought to be highly suspicious of "accidents".
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DPCrisp


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Living in villages per se does not mess up the water (surely?) but living in cities does.

Dunno. If a village is small enough for everyone to drink from one end of the stream and piss in the other, I guess everyone'll be OK. But as soon as the town is big enough for some people to be obliged to use only a dirty stretch of river...

On top of which, dense populations promote disease by contact, person-to-person, person-to-vermin, person-to-midden... On top of which, the quality of diet affects general health (e.g. an iron-poor diet can mean chronic-but-low-level anaemia: no sniffles but an early death; feeding yourself well means feeding infections well)... So there's a heap of factors all relative to each other.

BTW, did you know that smelling of horses prevented plague? Cavalry officers, stable boys... didn't get it. Not sure about cows, but they don't get fleas either, do they...?

Where some foresight is employed, it's cities that have the resources to overcome the problem by proper water and waste management. Other cities are just filthy. I guess it's largely down to human folly.

Orthodoxy takes the view that cities date from c. 3250 BC. (in the Middle East). However (but correct me if I am wrong) beer dates from before this

Wikipedia says Jericho was walled from about 8000 BC (but originates even earlier) and that beer goes back at least to 4000 BC. Still, I agree that

it is unlikely that beer was invented for the purpose of safe drinking.

It might have been noted unconsciously that drinking beer -- and plenty of it -- had its benefits, but it was probably encouraged on the usual "get it down ya, it does ya good" principle, regardless. (Ambulance men handed out cigarettes within living memory!) At least going to the beer shrine on the village green to take the beneficial waters was a lot easier than going to the Our Lady of the Mineral Spring shrine.

I agree that for any kind of alcohol gene to arise and spread round the world it must be way before all this. But then again there's a milk-intolerant gene that's "gone round the world" so I would have thought that all this is a mere genetic accident.

What do we know about the history of drinking milk? Not forgetting that milk is fermented into alcohol in some places...

But yes, maybe it's that alcohol intake took off over here because, by accident, it could.
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DPCrisp


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Wikipedia says

After the apples are gathered from the trees, they are "scratted" (ground) into what is called pomace or pommage...all the must or juice is squeezed from the pomace. This juice, after being strained in a coarse hair-sieve, is then put into either open vats or closed casks... Fermentation is best effected at a temperature of 4-16 °C.

and

The common eating apples are unsuitable for cidermaking, being low in tannins; specific apple cultivars bred especially for cidermaking are preferred.

and

In the United Kingdom it is predominantly (but by no means exclusively) made in the southwest and west of England.

French cidre is an alcoholic drink produced predominantly in Normandy and Brittany.

German cidre is mainly produced and consumed... particularly in the Frankfurt... and the Trier area, as well as the lower Saar area and the region bordering on Luxembourg.

In Luxembourg, viez is rather like English scrumpy.

The Spanish regions of Asturias and the Basque Country are well known for traditional sidra


That is,

-- the juice is not boiled in making cider;

-- sharper flavours are deliberate, perhaps more like bitter galls than sweet apples;

-- in the Old World, cider is made in Celtic/Megalithic areas (and Basque country).
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Mick Harper
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Dan, you are breaking some sacred conventions of Applied Epistemology.

Dunno. If a village is small enough for everyone to drink from one end of the stream and piss in the other, I guess everyone'll be OK. But as soon as the town is big enough for some people to be obliged to use only a dirty stretch of river...

You seem to think that people then are different from people now. Nobody pisses in a stream, then or now, they piss in closets, privies, cesspits etc. And people, then and now, are perfectly aware of the public health (not to mention aesthetic) implications of separating effluent from drinking water.

On top of which, dense populations promote disease by contact, person-to-person, person-to-vermin, person-to-midden... On top of which, the quality of diet affects general health (e.g. an iron-poor diet can mean chronic-but-low-level anaemia: no sniffles but an early death; feeding yourself well means feeding infections well)... So there's a heap of factors all relative to each other.

Dunno what this is in reference to but we have no evidence that cities were worse-fed or unhealthier than the countryside. Rather the reverse I would say since urbanites have ready access to markets and health services, whereas country folk always seem endemically subject to famine and are always going off to the local witch. What you are referring to is all the (no doubt well-meaning and effective AND true) propaganda of the Victorian Public Health industry.

BTW, did you know that smelling of horses prevented plague? Cavalry officers, stable boys... didn't get it. Not sure about cows, but they don't get fleas either, do they...?

Interesting. Especially in light of the fact that vaccination derives from observing dairymaid's cowpox preventing the deadlier smallpox. By the way how does your statement effect my contention that The Plague is not Bubonic Plague?

Where some foresight is employed, it's cities that have the resources to overcome the problem by proper water and waste management. Other cities are just filthy. I guess it's largely down to human folly.

Again, Victorian propaganda. Cities (and their inhabitants) seem to thrive everywhere and everywhen in conditions we would consider disastrous.
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DPCrisp


In: Bedfordshire
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Mick wrote:
In which case pubs are thousands of years old, and so are pub-names. But nobody agreed with me.

That stuff about "The Royal Oak" and "The King's Head" dating to the Civil War sounds like baloney (although just maybe the mythology was maintained in other circles and was first expressed in pub names rather late on...) But don't they say various other pub names showed the allegiance of the locals, either covertly or overtly (like marking out the 'safehouses')? Was the pub the hub of the community to this degree?
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Mick Harper
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I have tried for years, and over various forums, to get people interested in pubs and pub names. This is because of the Great Antiquity of these. (Or not, many London buses have destinations marked up as, for instance, DULWICH The Plough when the pub in question is now, thanks to exercises in rebranding, The Slug & Lettuce.)

On the Ansaxnet, where naturally everybody present supposed that British inns were a Roman innovation because that's the first time they turn up 'in the historical record', I pointed out that nobody except nutters and child molesters drinks on his own and that therefore the invention of alcohol must be covalent to the invention of the pub. I tried to get them to see that the pub and the village also must, for economic and social reasons, go hand in hand but since they all believe that the English population were living in wassail halls or dispersed Celtic homesteads at the time this didn't play very well either.

I think Dan and I tried to get GHMB interested in the meaning of the Green Man, the White Horse, the King's Head, the Seven Stars and all the other ubiquitously traditional pub names but I don't think we got very far.

Green(e) King is quite interesting. I assume, since I used to drink Greene King IPA (Indian Pale Ale, invented in Burton for export to Brits ruling India, though technically not an 'ale' which is beer minus the hops), that this is a mainly commercial dispute, but the Green King is an interesting character.

He is presumably the Green Man, the bloke with verbiage literally coming out of his mouth. Although he is supposed (including by me) to be of ancient lineage, he actually bursts on the scene in a big way when he starts appearing in great numbers (though mainly tucked away) in the astonishing and mysterious Gothic cathedrals of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. This is also the period when some highly redolent pub names come into existence eg The Trip To Jerusalem and the Saracen's Head. So it may be that the itinerant "masons" responsible for the cathedrals may have had their own carefully signalled hostelries.
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DPCrisp


In: Bedfordshire
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English villages are virtually defined by the combination of church and pub.

{And that's one of the problems of identifying 'the village' with 'the cluster of buildings'; when the village is really a cluster of farms/fields/parks/woods with public, private, manor and God houses, together with farm buildings, kilns, etc. scattered variously about. There may be a few miles between churches or pubs, but there are no gaps between villages: they fill up the spaces between towns, cities and roads.}
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Mick Harper
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I see no evidence (either ancient or modern) for this supposition about houses filling the spaces. The overwhelming urge, before cars and unless you're a nob, is to aggregate together. Who wants to walk three miles to the pub every night? I accept of course that there are people who live outside villages (for whatever reason) and that their houses are either built on roads or roads come into existence to link them, but for the most part people overwhelmingly prefer living in villages. It's one hellovalot safer even if you don't drink, don't go to church and don't like your fellow-man.
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TelMiles


In: London
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Mick Harper wrote:
I have tried for years, and over various forums, to get people interested in pubs and pub names. This is because of the Great Antiquity of these.

Just to say Mick, I think there may be something in this too. I'm looking into it at the moment, I'll let you know what my findings are.
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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Yes, South Londoners have a habit of dignifying their pub-crawls by saying to the wife, "I was engaged in hishtorical research, darling."
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