10-04-2008, 11:13 AM
OK. We are not animals. But what makes us human beings? What is the root of our civilization? A German scientist named Josef Reichholf has finally found the answer and published it in his book Warum die Menschen Sesshaft Wurden. The answer is: beer.
It has always been accepted that humankind started as gatherers, more or less like several primates, slowly learning to use tools (again, like several primates) and becoming hunters. Reichholf now proves that almost immediately after the last Ice Age, the switch to agriculture -and the root of all civilization- was not caused by the fact that this is a more productive mode of production (this was already questioned in the 1970s); the real reason why human beings became sedentary farmers, is because they had discovered how to make beer of barley and mushrooms.
An interview with Reichholf is here. Somehow the Greeks were right when they attributed the creation of civilization ot the god of drunkenness, Dionysus.
It has always been accepted that humankind started as gatherers, more or less like several primates, slowly learning to use tools (again, like several primates) and becoming hunters. Reichholf now proves that almost immediately after the last Ice Age, the switch to agriculture -and the root of all civilization- was not caused by the fact that this is a more productive mode of production (this was already questioned in the 1970s); the real reason why human beings became sedentary farmers, is because they had discovered how to make beer of barley and mushrooms.
An interview with Reichholf is here. Somehow the Greeks were right when they attributed the creation of civilization ot the god of drunkenness, Dionysus.
