{"id":6537,"date":"2015-06-04T10:18:32","date_gmt":"2015-06-04T17:18:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/BigJimIndustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=6537"},"modified":"2015-06-16T10:21:56","modified_gmt":"2015-06-16T17:21:56","slug":"how-beer-caused-global-warming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2015\/06\/04\/how-beer-caused-global-warming\/","title":{"rendered":"How Beer Caused Global Climate Change"},"content":{"rendered":"

from NAUTILUS<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

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Beer Domesticated Man<\/h1>\n

Early man chose pints over pastry. Wouldn\u2019t you?<\/h2>\n<\/hgroup>\n

By Gloria Dawson \/\u00a0 Illustration by Daniel Fishel<\/p>\n

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The domestication of wild grains has played a major role in human evolution, facilitating the transition from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to one based on agriculture. You might think that the grains were used for bread, which today represents a basic staple. But some scientists argue that it wasn\u2019t bread that motivated our ancestors to start grain farming. It was beer. Man, they say, chose pints over pastry.<\/p>\n

Beer has plenty to recommend it over bread. First, and most obviously, it is pleasant to drink. \u201cBeer had all the same nutrients as bread, and it had one additional advantage,\u201d argues Solomon H. Katz, an anthropology professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Namely, it gave early humans the same pleasant buzz it gives us. Patrick E. McGovern, the director of the Biomolecular Archaeology Project for Cuisine, Fermented Beverages, and Health at the University of Pennsylvania, goes even further. Beer, he says, was more nutritious than bread. It contains \u201cmore B vitamins and [more of the] essential amino acid lysine,\u201d McGovern writes in his book, Uncorking the Past: the Quest for Wine, Beer, and Other Alcoholic Beverages<\/i>. It was also safer to drink than water, because the fermentation process killed pathogenic microorganisms. \u201cWith a four to five percent alcohol content, beer is a potent mind-altering and medicinal substance,\u201d McGovern says, adding that ancient brewers acted as medicine men.<\/p>\n

In fact, McGovern has found that the ancients used beer as medicine. Working with the Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania, McGovern discovered traces of sage and thyme in ancient Egyptian jars. Luteolin, which is in sage, and ursolic acid, which is in thyme, both have anti-cancer properties. Similarly, artemisinin and isoscopolein from wormwood fight cancer, and were found in ancient Chinese rice wine. \u201cThe ancient fermented beverages constituted the universal medicine of humankind before the advent of synthetic medicines,\u201d McGovern says.<\/p>\n

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from NAUTILUS Beer Domesticated Man Early man chose pints over pastry. Wouldn\u2019t you? By Gloria Dawson \/\u00a0 Illustration by Daniel Fishel The domestication of wild grains has played a major role in human evolution, facilitating the transition from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to one based on agriculture. You might think that the grains were used for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6537\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}