A History of the World in 6 Glasses by Tom Standage

Today it's the drink of the working man, and it was then as well.' Wine 'It was the defining drink of Egypt and Mesopotamia. 'The guys who built the pyramids were paid in beer and bread,' Standage added. 'Beer would have been something that a common person could have had in the house and made whenever they wanted,' said Linda Bisson, a microbiologist at the Department of Viticulture and Enology at the University of California, Davis. It's as simple as that.'īeer was popular with the masses from the beginning. 'It's the drink associated with the dawn of civilization. You consume those crops as bread and as beer,' Standage noted. 'When people started agriculture the first crops they produced were barley or wheat.

The ancient Sumerians, who built advanced city-states in the area of present-day Iraq, began fermenting beer from barley at least 6,000 years ago. Take the six-pack, whose contents first fizzed at the dawn of civilization. 'They are relics of different historical periods still found in our kitchens.' 'The important drinks are still drinks that we enjoy today,' said Standage, a technology editor at the London-based magazine the Economist. The author of A History of the World in 6 Glasses (Walker & Company, June 2005), Standage lauds the libations that have helped shape our world from the Stone Age to the present day. Tom Standage urges drinkers to savor the history of their favorite beverages along with the taste.

A History of the World in 6 Glasses by Tom Standage