The History of Beer
Some fun and interesting excerpts from Wikipedia, History of Beer:
The modern anthropologist Alan Eames believes that "beer was the driving force that led nomadic mankind into village life... It was this appetite for beer-making material that led to crop cultivation, permanent settlement and agriculture."
The Greeks then taught the Romans to brew. The Romans called their brew cerevisia, from Ceres, the goddess of agriculture, and vis, Latin for "strength." Beer was important to early Romans, but during the Roman Republic wine displaced beer as the preferred alcoholic beverage. Beer became a beverage considered fit only for barbarians; Tacitus wrote disparagingly of the beer brewed by the Germanic peoples of his day.
The modern anthropologist Alan Eames believes that "beer was the driving force that led nomadic mankind into village life... It was this appetite for beer-making material that led to crop cultivation, permanent settlement and agriculture."
The Greeks then taught the Romans to brew. The Romans called their brew cerevisia, from Ceres, the goddess of agriculture, and vis, Latin for "strength." Beer was important to early Romans, but during the Roman Republic wine displaced beer as the preferred alcoholic beverage. Beer became a beverage considered fit only for barbarians; Tacitus wrote disparagingly of the beer brewed by the Germanic peoples of his day.