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A few weeks ago I mentioned that I was going to read The Prehistoric Origins of European Economic Integration and throw up a post on the topic. I’ve read it, but I don’t have anything intelligent to say on it right now. Unfortunately, when it comes to economic history I’m at the left edge of the knowledge curve, and my inferential engine really isn’t post-worthy most of the time. When something intelligent pops into mind I’ll post it, but until then I thought this portion of the paper was interesting from a GNXP perspective:
Like specie, addictive substances have played a central role in integrating the world economy. Alcohol consumption in the European interior goes back to the third millennium, and was evidently a central element in early ritual. Until northern Europeans learned how to malt grain to brewing beer, however, alcohol could only be obtained by fermenting fruit and honey, which made it costly and rare. The arrival of a beverage having an alcoholic content upwards of ten percent worked a revolution in trans-Alpine Europe. Writing when the trade was in full swing immediately after the Roman conquest Diodorus observed that
The Gauls are exceedingly addicted to the use of wine and fill themselves with the wine brought into their country by merchants, drinking it unmixed; and since they partake of this drink without moderation by reason of their craving for it, when they are drunken they fall into a stupor or state of madness. Consequently, many of the Italian traders, induced by the love of money that characterizes them, believe that the love of wine of these Gauls is their own Godsend,’
Caesar reports that the Nerviens and the Suevians refused entry to wine traders for fear the drink would weaken their warriors.
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I played golf at the Barona Indian Reservation casino outside San Diego in 2001 and I was very impressed that, like the Nervians and Suevians, they didn’t sell alcoholic drinks anywhere on the reservation, not even in the casino.
I’ve sometimes wondered if wine tolerance or something through the ages has anything to do with that particularly Gaullic phenotype.
“Until northern Europeans learned how to malt grain to brewing beer, however, alcohol could only be obtained by fermenting fruit and honey, which made it costly and rare.”
That is a non-sequitur unless one accepts the premise that fruit was hard to get in the right quantities. Cider is easy to make from apples. Perhaps apple trees were not introduced to northern Europe until quite a late period; I don’t know. Nowadays apples grow well all over northern Europe, including western Norway.
Even so, blackberries and raspberries grow well in cool climates – I believe raspberries are a major crop in Scotland – and all fruit supports wild yeast, making it possible to make alcoholic drinks simply by putting crushed fruit and water into a large vat and leaving it for a fortnight or so.
So I think the argument about the relative costs of alcoholic drinks needs putting on firmer foundations.
all fruit supports wild yeast, making it possible to make alcoholic drinks simply by putting crushed fruit and water into a large vat and leaving it for a fortnight or so.
I don’t think so – you still need a good amount of sugar, as the fruits don’t have enough sugar on their own. Even today, wines outside of Mediterranean climates are typically chaptalized to boost their otherwise low alcohol contents. There might be a little more involved than the author implies – such as the relative low-yield per acre of northern fruits making alcohol production a very costly process in addition to the cost of the added sugar (honey), but it seems like the overall cost of honey is a plausibly sufficient explanation.
Perhaps apple trees were not introduced to northern Europe until quite a late period
As I recall the Romans get credit for introducing the apple up north. So for purposes of this discussion I think you can assume that cider was not yet invented by the Europeans.
As for the berries, I would tend to agree with ziel that there must have been some problem with that approach, since berry-based alcohol doesn’t seem to be attested in anything I can remember about the early Europeans. Not that we have documents about what was happening 2000 years ago, but if they did make alcohol from berries you’d think the practice would have survived another thousand years (during which time the written record get a little better).
The only fruit with the necessary sugar content to produce a more than 10% alcohol content beverage are grapes grown in sunny climates. It is rather laborious to get drunk on berry wine with 2 – 3% alcohol content. French people’s almost Mediterranean tolerance to alcohol is product of selection and immigration from Spain and Italy.
i doubt you can compare the quantities of fruit you can collect to the number of grapes you can harvest anyway. this isn’t a qualitative issue; it’s a quantitative one.
“Mediterranean tolerance to alcohol”
Huh? Eastern “mediterraneans” are more frequently alcohol intolerant. Perhaps you should pay more attention to the scientific literature and less to razib.
I pointed out another possibly addictive/intoxicating property of grains (and milk) here.
Rapid introduction of alcohol must’ve left some detectable selection.
Using drugs to ‘facilitate’ trade seems to be common e.g the British selling heroin to to China.If you want to take control of a country,let the drugs flow e.g Afghanistan.
Heroin hadn’t been invented when Britons sold opium to Chinese (and, indeed, to each other, since it wasn’t illegal then).
“Until northern Europeans learned how to malt grain to brewing beer” – this implies that malting came late to northern Europe? Aren’t there some grave goods etc that say otherwise?
“the relative low-yield per acre of northern fruits” – this should be less of a problem as razib pointed out. It’s relatively easy to pick large amounts of northern berries, but a lot of them contain large amounts of natural ‘preservatives’. This makes brewing from them difficult even for modern home brewers who can easily add extra sugar.
AFAIK: cider, beer and mead (so typical of Germanic peoples), are probably much older than wine in Central and Northern Europe (and possibly Western and Eastern Europe too).
Also much earlier than Romans, Greeks and other Mediterranean civilizations (Etruscans, Phoenicians) were already exchanging wines and other luxury items by the products the Celts could offer: slaves, grain, amber (imported from Northern Europe)…
Wine was therefore a luxury import. Also Greek wine specially was typically not just wine, but some hallucinogenic mix (at least that’s what many authours believe). That’s why Greeks drank it extremely diluted in water, because otherwise it was just way too much. Maybe what the Belgians feared was those other psychoactive components, while typical alcohol-only beer or cider was not a problem for them – rather the opposite.
Just in case there is any doubt, I’ve searched for some online documentation:
ent_times.htm#TEUTONS
blishing.com/brenach/historyofbeer.htm
1. http://www.eat-online.net/english/habits/beer_in_anci
Says that Tacitus expressly mentions beer among Germanic tribes. Also that there is archaeological evidence of beer-making in Hallstatt (proto-Celtic) sites.
2. http://www.thracepu
Mentions that Strabo and Pliny mentioned beer making in all Western Europe, from Spain northwards. According to these classical sources, Celts made a beer called “curmic” and also cider and mead.
Just a couple of mentions because I don’t want to bore you nor myself.