Except for, ya know, all the civilizations that didn’t have alcohol… or the ones that did, but exceptionally little of it… or even the ones that had a lot of it, who seemingly all discovered it by accidentally leaving food / drink around to spoil and ferment…
In pretty much every case, either specialization of labor or sedentary agriculture (or both) predates a society’s ability and desire to produce alcohol, and even then there are groups of people who just never developed alcohol.
That’s what everyonethought until recently, but a year or two back the oldest known bread was discovered (dating from nearly 15,000 years ago and largely composed of ingredients gathered from the wild). It seems to have been used not as food but as feedstock for beer. It’s likely its producers were at least party still hunter/gatherers: it predates the known invention of agriculture by several thousand years and one (minor) ice age.
And you can ferment things that don’t require crops. I don’t know that there’s evidence of prehistorical production of Kumis, but it’s certainly possible.
In an anthropology class. I was told fermentation was how women domesticated men and developed “civilization”. Homebrew gave men something safe and enjoyable to drink, and a reason to stay put with the brewers and their offspring, and claim ownership of fixed farming lands. As cities developed further, larger-scaled organized brewing was taken over by groups of men, and things have been going downhill since then.
That’s… honestly a pretty wild thing for an anthropologist to say.
For one thing, it’s an absurdly broad and universal declaration, which any good anthropologist should know to avoid like the plague. There are a lot of cultures for which that statement is flatly false, and even the ones where it seems like it could apply it probably isn’t actually accurate about.
For another thing, it’s playing at being sociology rather than anthropology. Sociology deals with how societies and populations operate as a whole, while anthropology is concerned with individuals and ethnicities.
I dunno. I’m with you on the “absurdly broad and universal declaration” part, but I’m not sure I agree about the sociology/anthropology distinction.
For one, at what point do multiple individuals, as studied by an anthropologist, begin to constitute a society or population, as studied by a sociologist? When must the study of a society or population entail the study of its individual members, and when must the study of individuals entail the study of the societies or populations to which they belong? And are ethnicities relevant only at the individual level, as this distinction implies, or can they be studied in relation to societies and populations as well? (For example, using your distinction, would the term “ethnic groups” be considered an anthropological or sociological one?)
Me, I would argue that there is plenty of overlap between the subject matter of the two fields, inasmuch as they both entail the study of people and that it would place unduly severe (and frankly artificial) limits on the information one is willing to consider if one were to try studying individuals without reference to the societies or populations to which they belong or studying societies or populations without reference to the individuals that comprise them.
To the extent that I see a distinction between the two fields, I would argue it is primarily a distinction of method, in that the methods of sociology tend to be more quantitative and the methods of anthropology tend to be more qualitative. And even this distinction is not rigid, in that qualitative information can be usefully quantified and quantitative information may lead to useful qualitative conclusions. Perhaps even “method” is too strong a term and should be replaced by “emphasis”, but I’ll stick with “method” if only because I see the issue in terms of the methods that are emphasized.
The big disclaimer here is that, although I’ve taken a class or two in each field, I would not call myself either a “sociologist” or an “anthropologist”, so other folks have no doubt given the issue more thought than I have. I’d be interested to hear from people who do consider themselves sociologists or anthropologists.
I think Artie has been a gerbil the entire time Sergio has been with them. The question also is whether Artie has traveled back in time yet. If he hasn’t, then he would have no knowledge of being Sergio’s teacher, even if Sergio does recognize him. Then Sergio would have to dismiss it as Artie just bearing a strong resemblance to his substitute teacher.
One, is that detail even fully canon?
Two, didn’t it require time travel which technically hasn’t happened yet?
Three, does he even remember his kindergarten teacher? A lot of people don’t.
Well, Foradain made a good observation – it was first grade, not kindergarten.
One: Aside from that correction, yes it’s canon. When Dave talked to his daughter at the bar after he went mad, she said she had borrowed the time machine from Artie, who was using it to do a study on violent tendencies in early childhood. Shaenon said his substitute teacher gig in the first storyline in “Li’l Mell” was part of that study.
Two: Assuming the Narboniverse follows real time, it’s been 14 years since that encounter between Dave and Rosalind, so Artie may or may not have traveled back to do the teacher thing yet. He did test Dave’s time machine a few years back, but there were still some bugs to work out. If he hasn’t traveled back yet, that only affects Artie’s memory of the event. For him, it hasn’t happened. But the other end of the time jump is in Sergio’s past, so for him, it has happened.
Three: As for remembering teachers – even kindergarten teachers – it becomes more likely when said teachers have a profound impact on you. And Artie definitely had a profound impact on Sergio – even though it was only for a day. I don’t remember all of the substitute teachers I ever had, but there are a few, even from first grade, that I remember well.
Beer breweries maybe, but that’s not the only kind. Pretty sure the sake breweries in Japan weren’t; I’d imagine Korea has pretty old ones too, and China probably has equally old breweries unless they all got wiped out during the Cultural Revolution.
IIRC, the oldest company in the world is a Japanese family-owned construction company, followed by a German brewery.
fairly certain civilization was founded on alcohol, I think there was a documentary about it somewhere.
Except for, ya know, all the civilizations that didn’t have alcohol… or the ones that did, but exceptionally little of it… or even the ones that had a lot of it, who seemingly all discovered it by accidentally leaving food / drink around to spoil and ferment…
In pretty much every case, either specialization of labor or sedentary agriculture (or both) predates a society’s ability and desire to produce alcohol, and even then there are groups of people who just never developed alcohol.
That’s what everyonethought until recently, but a year or two back the oldest known bread was discovered (dating from nearly 15,000 years ago and largely composed of ingredients gathered from the wild). It seems to have been used not as food but as feedstock for beer. It’s likely its producers were at least party still hunter/gatherers: it predates the known invention of agriculture by several thousand years and one (minor) ice age.
“party … hunter/gatherers” ? Typo, or Freudian slip?
And you can ferment things that don’t require crops. I don’t know that there’s evidence of prehistorical production of Kumis, but it’s certainly possible.
You can gather fermented berries right off the bush.
In an anthropology class. I was told fermentation was how women domesticated men and developed “civilization”. Homebrew gave men something safe and enjoyable to drink, and a reason to stay put with the brewers and their offspring, and claim ownership of fixed farming lands. As cities developed further, larger-scaled organized brewing was taken over by groups of men, and things have been going downhill since then.
That’s… honestly a pretty wild thing for an anthropologist to say.
For one thing, it’s an absurdly broad and universal declaration, which any good anthropologist should know to avoid like the plague. There are a lot of cultures for which that statement is flatly false, and even the ones where it seems like it could apply it probably isn’t actually accurate about.
For another thing, it’s playing at being sociology rather than anthropology. Sociology deals with how societies and populations operate as a whole, while anthropology is concerned with individuals and ethnicities.
I dunno. I’m with you on the “absurdly broad and universal declaration” part, but I’m not sure I agree about the sociology/anthropology distinction.
For one, at what point do multiple individuals, as studied by an anthropologist, begin to constitute a society or population, as studied by a sociologist? When must the study of a society or population entail the study of its individual members, and when must the study of individuals entail the study of the societies or populations to which they belong? And are ethnicities relevant only at the individual level, as this distinction implies, or can they be studied in relation to societies and populations as well? (For example, using your distinction, would the term “ethnic groups” be considered an anthropological or sociological one?)
Me, I would argue that there is plenty of overlap between the subject matter of the two fields, inasmuch as they both entail the study of people and that it would place unduly severe (and frankly artificial) limits on the information one is willing to consider if one were to try studying individuals without reference to the societies or populations to which they belong or studying societies or populations without reference to the individuals that comprise them.
To the extent that I see a distinction between the two fields, I would argue it is primarily a distinction of method, in that the methods of sociology tend to be more quantitative and the methods of anthropology tend to be more qualitative. And even this distinction is not rigid, in that qualitative information can be usefully quantified and quantitative information may lead to useful qualitative conclusions. Perhaps even “method” is too strong a term and should be replaced by “emphasis”, but I’ll stick with “method” if only because I see the issue in terms of the methods that are emphasized.
The big disclaimer here is that, although I’ve taken a class or two in each field, I would not call myself either a “sociologist” or an “anthropologist”, so other folks have no doubt given the issue more thought than I have. I’d be interested to hear from people who do consider themselves sociologists or anthropologists.
Would’a thought…once the women introduced the men to alcohol, they’d just hang around that all day not doing any work.
Sidebar thought: every major brewery in the world was founded by Germans.
every major brewery?
YMMV but too me that sounds honestly geographically as well as historically false (Germany when was that ?).
Perhaps the validity of the statement rests on the definition of “major brewery”.
Including the Sake breweries of Japan? Huangjiu breweries in China?
Whatever they are, they’re not beer.
Ooh, that sounds like the name of a song, thimbles of beer! Quick! Someone write a drinking song called that!
“Beer, beer, glorious beer!
Thimbles filled right up to here!
Don’t be afraid of it,
Drink ’til you’re made of it!”
I’ll let someone more skilled at filk finish this…
9,999,999 Thimbles of beer on the wall… They’re kinda small, right?
“…and though the beers were rather small, they had to count them all…now they know how many beers it takes to fill the Albert Hall…”
Working on a reel, “Thimblefuls of Beer”, but may have to add to the lyrical attempts later as well.
Reel written: http://www.panix.com/~daphne/tunes/Thimblefuls_of_Beer.pdf (MP3: http://www.panix.com/~daphne/tunes/Thimblefuls_of_Beer+draft_chords.mp3 (from MIDI).)
Methinks this be an appropriate soundtrack right about now:
I believe that in the epic of Gilgamesh, that Gil brings Enkidu to civilization with beer and a woman.
So has Sergio figured out that the talking gerbil is his old kindergarten teacher yet?
I think Artie has been a gerbil the entire time Sergio has been with them. The question also is whether Artie has traveled back in time yet. If he hasn’t, then he would have no knowledge of being Sergio’s teacher, even if Sergio does recognize him. Then Sergio would have to dismiss it as Artie just bearing a strong resemblance to his substitute teacher.
One, is that detail even fully canon?
Two, didn’t it require time travel which technically hasn’t happened yet?
Three, does he even remember his kindergarten teacher? A lot of people don’t.
Especially when they got a new one every couple of weeks.
Well, Foradain made a good observation – it was first grade, not kindergarten.
One: Aside from that correction, yes it’s canon. When Dave talked to his daughter at the bar after he went mad, she said she had borrowed the time machine from Artie, who was using it to do a study on violent tendencies in early childhood. Shaenon said his substitute teacher gig in the first storyline in “Li’l Mell” was part of that study.
Two: Assuming the Narboniverse follows real time, it’s been 14 years since that encounter between Dave and Rosalind, so Artie may or may not have traveled back to do the teacher thing yet. He did test Dave’s time machine a few years back, but there were still some bugs to work out. If he hasn’t traveled back yet, that only affects Artie’s memory of the event. For him, it hasn’t happened. But the other end of the time jump is in Sergio’s past, so for him, it has happened.
Three: As for remembering teachers – even kindergarten teachers – it becomes more likely when said teachers have a profound impact on you. And Artie definitely had a profound impact on Sergio – even though it was only for a day. I don’t remember all of the substitute teachers I ever had, but there are a few, even from first grade, that I remember well.
Also, first grade, not kindergarten.
Beer made out of sewer water… I wouldn’t assume that its effect is entirely due to alcohol.
Not all sewers carry waste water. And even on the off-chance they only have access to contaminated water, they could be using distillation to purify.
I wouldn’t drink the runoff from a road or an arable field without treatment, either.
These guys, meanwhile, are group of rats who eat humans’ food waste. They may not be overly concerned about the quality of the water they drink.
Well, to get drunk on a thimbleful of beer, you’d need a toothpick…
“How do you get drunk on a thimbulful of beer?”
Very high alcohol content and a lot of thimbuls.
As someone who has the body mass of a pipe cleaner, I can confirm that there are indeed people who can get drunk on thimbles of beer.
Enough thimbles add up after a while. (Are those sewing thimbles or bar thimbles? The second are larger.)
Granny Clampett’s thimble.
Beer breweries maybe, but that’s not the only kind. Pretty sure the sake breweries in Japan weren’t; I’d imagine Korea has pretty old ones too, and China probably has equally old breweries unless they all got wiped out during the Cultural Revolution.
IIRC, the oldest company in the world is a Japanese family-owned construction company, followed by a German brewery.
That was supposed to go with the “Every major brewery was founded by Germans” thought.
More like a nanobrewery.
That was the point of the whole gag. It’s literally a microbrewery (unlike the average “microbrewery”, which is really only a minibrewery, at best).
We have Picobreweries here…
I really like the cheerful expression on the drinking rats here.