Page 189 - Berkshire Encyclopedia Of World History Vol I - Abraham to Coal

74 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

When I sell liquor, it’s called bootlegging; when my
patrons serve it on Lake Shore Drive, it’s called
hospitality. • Al Capone (1899–1947)

Pritchard, A. (1980). Alchemy: A bibliography of English language writ- social inhibitions that is often experienced as euphoria or
ings. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. release from stress. In extreme quantities, alcohol can
Raff, J. (2000). Jung and the Alchemical Imagination. Jung on the Hud-
son book series. Berwick, ME: Nicholas-Hays. incapacitate the nervous system entirely, leading to uncon-
Roob, A. (2001). Alchemy and mysticism (S. Whiteside, Trans.). Koln, sciousness and even death.At blood level concentrations
Germany: Taschen.
Smith, S. (Ed.). (1995). Funk and Wagnalls new international dictionary of more than .4 percent, most people will be anesthetized,
of the English language (Vol. 1). Chicago: World Publishers. and above .5 percent, they may stop breathing.
von Franz, M.-L. (1980). Alchemy: An introduction to the symbolism and
the psychology. Toronto, Canada: Inner City Books.
The Earliest
Alcoholic Drinks
For historians, it is the social, cultural, political, and eco-
nomic aspects of alcohol use that are most important.
Alcohol Fermentation is a natural process and can occur when-
ever substances rich in sugars (including grapes, berries,
t is probable that all human communities have used grains, honey, bananas, palm sap, agave, and even mare’s
Imind-altering substances in their rituals of hospitality milk) are left in warm, moist conditions and exposed to
and in their spiritual practices.Alcohol has for many mil- the air, so that airborne yeasts can come in contact with
lennia been the preferred mind-altering substance of the them and break them down into alcohol. It is tempting
Mediterranean world, Europe, and perhaps a few other to suppose that alcoholic drinks first became important
parts of the world, and in recent times its use has spread after the Neolithic revolution, when more and more
around the globe. humans became sedentary and farming communities
The word alcohol is derived from the Arabic al-kuhul, began to store large quantities of grains or other starchy
which in turn derived from kuhl, one of whose meanings substances. The archaeologist Andrew Sherratt has
is “the essence” or “spirit” of something.To a chemist, the argued, partly on the basis of the spread of drinking ves-
word alcohol describes a group of organic molecules sels, that in Eurasia alcoholic drinks first acquired social
with the general chemical formula C nH (2n+1)OH.To non- and cultural significance in Mesopotamia or the eastern
chemists, the word refers to a group of drinks with mind- Mediterranean from about the fourth millennium BCE,in
altering properties, whose active ingredient (or essence) areas where they could be made from grapes or dates.
is ethanol, one of the simplest of all alcohols.The chem- But alcoholic drinks were not confined to western Eura-
ical formula for ethanol is CH 3CH 2OH. sia. Maize beers were used in Mesoamerica and Peru; and
Ethanol is most commonly produced as a by-product anthropological studies record their use in many small-
of fermentation, a chemical reaction in which energy is scale farming societies in modern times.
released through the breakdown of glucose. But fermen- Natural fermentation generates drinks of relatively low
tation does not release all the energy locked up in sugars, alcoholic content, anything from about 8 to 14 percent
and when alcohol is consumed, the human body can alcohol by volume for wines (grape alcohols) and from 2
extract some of this remaining energy at the rate of just to 8 percent for beers (grain alcohols). Concentrations
over 7 calories per gram of alcohol. This is why small higher than about 14 percent tend to kill yeast, so natu-
amounts of alcohol can be energizing or relaxing. In ral fermentation cannot proceed beyond this concentra-
larger quantities, above approximately .05 percent in the tion. But most traditionally consumed alcoholic drinks
blood, alcohol acts as a depressant, affecting mainly the probably contained much less alcohol. Weak alcoholic
brain and nervous system, the way barbiturates and anes- drinks such as kvass (a Russian rye beer) and koumiss (fer-
thetics do. Even in quite small quantities, alcohol can mented mare’s milk, drunk in Central Asia) usually are no
inhibit normal thought processes, leading to a loss of more than 2 percent alcohol, and were often used as a