A History of the World in 6 Glasses

by Tom Standage

Beer is a liquid relic from human prehistory, and its origins are closely intertwined with the origins of civilization itself.

“Beer, it scareth men from thee, it sendeth thy soul to perdition. Thou art like a broken steering-oar in a ship, that is obedient on neither side.”

“Take not upon thyself to drink a jug of beer. Thou speakest, and an unintelligible utterance issueth from thy mouth.”

In both cultures, beer was a staple foodstuff without which no meal was complete. It was consumed by everyone, rich and poor, men and women, adults and children, from the top of the social pyramid to the bottom. It was truly the defining drink of these first great civilizations.

Whether in stone-age villages, Mesopotamian banqueting halls, or modern pubs and bars, beer has brought people together since the dawn of civilization.

For the Greeks, wine drinking was synonymous with civilization and refinement: What kind of wine you drank, and its age, indicated how cultured you were.

The survival to this day of so much black-figure and red-figure pottery, including drinking vessels, is misleading, however. The rich drank from silver or gold drinking vessels, rather than pottery. But it is the pottery vessels that survive because they were used in burials.

Rum was the liquid embodiment of both the triumph and the oppression of the first era of globalization.

The taxation of rum and molasses, which began the estrangement of Britain from its American colonies, had given rum a distinctly revolutionary flavor.

The independence of America and the ruin of China; such was the legacy of tea’s influence on British imperial policy and, through it, on the course of world history.

The popularity of bottled water stems from the widespread belief that it is healthier and safer than tap water. But tap water, in developed nations at least, is just as safe. While there are occasional contamination scares, they affect bottled water too. In one study, published in the Archives of Family Medicine, researchers compared bottled water with tap water from Cleveland, Ohio, and found that a quarter of the samples of bottled water had significantly higher levels of bacteria. The scientists concluded that “use of bottled water on the assumption of purity can be misguided.” Another study carried out at the University of Geneva came to the same conclusion, as did a report from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, which found that bottled water was no better from a nutritional point of view than ordinary tap water.

When you next raise some beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, or Coca-Cola to your lips, think about how it reached you across space and time, and remember that it contains more than mere alcohol or caffeine. There is history, too, amid its swirling depths.