APWH Summer Assignment P2 Essay

Submitted By yabbado
Words: 2174
Pages: 9

1. Dating back all the way to the age when humans roaming about the new Earth resulted to scavenging and hunting the lands in search for food and in a necessity of survival was the all around famous beer. Because time was ancient then and knowledge of hygienic care was unprecedented, widespread contamination and lack of vital nutrition as well as useful skills caused rapid death rates. However, history of the becoming of beer, which was discovered, not invented, was inexorable and helped mold beneficial circumstances in the future of those who had recently emigrated from Africa about 50,000 years ago, places like the Fertile Crescent. As aforementioned, epidemic diseases and fatal illness rooting from bacteria had lurked and hindered the upcoming change of civilization, mobilizing everything until the people preserved their usual meal of cereal grain, which holds granules of starch to make meals like porridge or gruel; it holds the ability to be stowed away for later use and stay fresh, making this grain very convenient for traveling and maneuvering around. Gruel, as the people soon discovered, when left sitting around for a certain amount of time, “became slightly fizzy and pleasantly intoxicating, as the action of wild yeasts from the air fermented the sugar in the gruel into alcohol”, and the widespread forthcoming of beer was born (pg. 19). Since beer does not hold bacteria found in many other liquids, it was drunk more often than water, gifting those who do with a palatable taste with its alcohol content. Beer was seen as a holy gift from the heavens and many found its usefulness as well as its adulterated taste to be supernatural and medically helpful, soon wrapping a new type of civilization amongst the humans who wandered around the Fertile Crescent near 9000 BCE, particularly Mesopotamia; when agricultural needs took over the need to hunt-and-gather, people began settling and arranging land to make it suitable for farming and planting crops and grains, thus crediting beer for its impact on ancient events of history, such as the first writing, artistic records of the famously drunken beverage, and new knowledge that pushes away old habits of hunting.

2. The opportunities that men are granted in the Greek age when it comes to wine drinking is the chance to associate with one another in a symposium. A symposium was a place for men to go to for discussing a variety of topics, basically a democratic gathering to go about “political analogies” and to “enjoy each other’s company and chiefly to refresh themselves with learned discussion” with the pleasurable company of wine served and shared in a carved bowl. Attending the symposium was like challenging yourself to the company of men and the ideally delusions the people once thought were the repercussions that wine gave you, revealing the man you are underneath. Also, drinking wine and participating such events earned men the impression of a Greek, civilized being. 3. According to the Bible, wine held its important place in the history regarding Jesus, with the transformation of six jars of water into wine near the Sea of Galilee, giving win a vital permanence in time and a symbolic significance to the followers of Christianity. Jesus had stated, “I am the vine, you are the branches,” to his followers (pg. 66). After the Last Supper and the offering of the now holy drink to the disciples, wine had earned its epitome of appraised acceptance in the widespread religion. Contradictorily, the Muslim people did not accept the fermented beverage as widely acclaimed by the Christians, and instead found the drink to be ambiguous and a disgracing, almost satanic drink even, through the opinion of the prophet, Muhammad, who thought the drink only “stirs enmity and hatred within the mind” after witnessing a crude fight between two men inebriated in the intoxication of the said drink (pg. 67). He heralded that the stability of the mind is faltered from the alcohol consumed by