Dinesh's photos with the keyword: Uncorking the Past

HBM & Best wishes

Why have cultures around the world had a millennia-long love affair with wine? My short answer then was that alcohol has been the universal drug, and that wine provides the highest concentration of this simple organic compound (ethanol) available in nature. Humans throughout history have been astounded by alcohol’s effects, whether it is imbibed as a beverage or applied to the skin. The health benefits are obvious -- alcohol relieves, pain, stops infection, and seems to cure diseases. Its psychological and social benefits are equally apparent -- alcohol eases the difficulties of everyday life, lubricates social exchanges, and contributes to a joy in being alive. Briefly put, alcoholic beverages are unique among all the drugs that bumans and our early hominid ancestors have exploited on this planet for more than four million years. Their preeminence and universal allure -- what might be called their biological, social, and religious imperatives -- make them significant in understanding the development of our species and its cultures. ~ xi / xii

Painting from a Late Classic Mayan vase, showing a ruler about to partake of a foaming cacao beverage. Probably tamales covered with a cacao-mole sauce are heaped inside a serv ing bowl under the ruler’s platform Photograph K6418 @ Justin Kerr

A modern mashing installation in Burkina Faso whose construction is remarkably similar to the facilities of Predynastic Egypt five thousand years earlier. Photograph courtesy Michel Voltz, Universite de Ougadougou, Burkina Faso

The tumulus burial of a Celtic prince at Hochdorf, Germany, ca 525 B.C., is uncannily reminiscent of the Midas Tumuls royal burial at Gordion, Turkey, of two centuries earlier. The burial chamber is enclosed in a double wall of logs, and a single male laid out in his finery, accompanied by a massive “claudron” and vessels for drinking and eating at a final funerary feast. Instead of “phrygian grog,” the 500 liter claudron had originally been filled with a beverage dominated by honey mead. Courtesy of J. Biel and Dr. Simone Stork / Keltenmuseum. Hochdorf.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotch_whisky www.scotchwhiskyexperience.co.uk/about-whisky/history The term ‘whisky’ derives originally from the Gaelic ‘uisge beatha’, or ‘usquebaugh’, meaning ‘water of life’. Gaelic is that branch of Celtic spoken in the Highlands of Scotland.

This magnificent Neolithic rock painting, dating from the third millennium B.C., or earlier was discovered by the explorer Henri Lhote in the Tassili n’Ajjer Mountains of the central Sahara Desert. Among their herds, nomads appear to engage in a drinking ceremony. A man (kneeling at left), helped by possibly his father or an elder (seated at left) drinks from a large decorated jar using long straw. From encampment to encampment, cereal beer and its technology made their way from east to west across Africa. Image @ Pierre Colombel/CORBIS

Red crowned cranes perform their mating dance on the frozen plains of Manchuria. the two dozen flutes made from the early Neolithic site of Jiahu were exclusively made from one of the wing bones (the ulna) of this bird Photography @ by James G. parker

Drinking beer through a long straw in an ancient tradition that continues today throughout Africa. Funerary stela from el-Amarna (ca 1350 B>C) showing an Egyptian man, sporting a Semitic-style beard, quaffing his brew through a drinking tube, aided by a servant boy. The cup in the latter’s hand might have been used to dispense a special ingredient or hallucinogen, such as essene of blue lotus. Photography courtesy of J. Liepe, Agyptisches Museum, Staatlich Museen zu Berlin, Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz/Art Resource Ny # 14,122

Mesopotamian barley beer was drunk through straws. In the earliest known depiction of a popular motif, on a clay seal from Tepe Gawra, Iraq, ca. 3850 B.C., two thirsty individuals are thought to be imbibing beer through drinking tubes in his fashion from a gargantuan jar.

Carved bowl or goblet in limestone from Nevali Cori, Ca.8000 B.C., height 13.5 cm. The exuberant dancing scene of two humans and a tortoise on the exterior of this vessel is unique. Photography courtesy of Professor Dr. Harald Hauptmann, Euphrates Archive, Hdidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften.

The communal drinking of beer through straws was not just the prerogative of some ancient inhabitants of the Fertile Crescent and environs. It is worldwide phenomenon -- attested in China and the Pacific, the Americas and Africa and still widely practiced. The custom is wide-spread that one suspects that another factor is at work beyond simple utility. Certainly, reeds and stalks are easily come by, and their long, uniform hollowness would have invited blowing and sucking. A solid head of husks and yeast of the surface of a brew keeps out oxygen and preserves the beer longer, so it is worth keeping it intact and using a drinking tube to get at the good stuff below. Even if such practicalities argue for independent invention, one is still left with the question of why drinking through straws and employing the same vessel to both make and consume the beverage are nearly universal practices for cereal beer but generally unattested for fruit wines and mead. ~ Page 70

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_of_Laussel