Ancient fermented beverages had relatively low alcohol content. When the yeasts die, fermentation stops and the alcohol content levels off. So for thousands of years, alcohol content was limited. That changed with the invention of a process called distillation. Alcohol boils at a lower temperature than water, so it vaporizes first. At first, these stronger spirits were used for medicinal purposes. Rum made from sugar harvested in European colonies in the Caribbean became a staple for sailors and was traded to North America.
Europeans brought brandy and gin to Africa and traded it for enslaved people, land, and goods like palm oil and rubber. Spirits became a form of money in these regions. Cheap spirits flooded the market and reached a peak in the mid-eighteenth century. In Britain, gin consumption reached 18 million gallons and alcoholism became widespread. The nineteenth century brought a change in attitudes and the temperance movement began promoting the moderate use of alcohol—which ultimately became a push for total prohibition.
In the US passed a law prohibiting the manufacture, sale, import and export of intoxicating liquors. The illegal alcohol trade boomed and by , the prohibition of alcohol was cancelled. Learn the Truth About Drugs, enroll in the free online courses. Find out the truth about alcohol. Get the facts. Request your free copy of the booklet, The Truth About Alcohol.
Sign the pledge and lead the way to a drug-free life. Work with others to help spread the truth about drugs. Thank you for subscribing. Sign up for news and updates from the Foundation! For example, wine is made from the sugar in grapes, beer from the sugar in malted barley a type of grain , cider from the sugar in apples, vodka from the sugar in potatoes, beets or other plants.
At lower doses, alcohol can act as a stimulant, 3 inducing feelings of euphoria and talkativeness, but drinking too much alcohol at one session can lead to drowsiness, respiratory depression where breathing becomes slow, shallow or stops entirely , coma or even death. As well as its acute and potentially lethal sedative effect at high doses, alcohol has effects on every organ in the body and these effects depend on the blood alcohol concentration BAC over time.
Find out what happens when you drink alcohol. Call the Alcohol Drug Helpline on , visit their website , or free txt Hall, Robert A. Butrym, Michael P. McGovern first met with archaeologists and scientists, including his co-authors on the paper, in China in , returning there in and Because of the great interest in using modern scientific techniques to investigate a crucial aspect of ancient Chinese culture, collaboration was initiated and samples carried back to the U.
Chemical tests of the pottery from the Neolithic village of Jiahu was of special interest, because it is some of the earliest known pottery from China. This site was already famous for yielding some of the earliest musical instruments and domesticated rice, as well as possibly the earliest Chinese pictographic writing.
The prehistoric beverage at Jiahu, Dr. McGovern asserts, paved the way for unique cereal beverages of the proto-historic 2nd millennium BCE, remarkably preserved as liquids inside sealed bronze vessels of the Shang and Western Zhou Dynasties. The vessels had become hermetically sealed when their tightly fitting lids corroded, preventing evaporation.
Numerous bronze vessels with these liquids have been excavated at major urban centers along the Yellow River, especially from elite burials of high-ranking individuals. Besides serving as burial goods to sustain the dead in the afterlife, the vessels and their contents can also be related to funerary ceremonies in which living intermediaries communicated with the deceased ancestor and gods in an altered state of consciousness after imbibing a fermented beverage.
McGovern noted.
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