在我们展望饮酒的未来之前，我们必须了解它的过去。几千年来，酒精一直是社会的主食，从啤酒到烈酒再到葡萄酒，有数百种形式。但是酒精的起源在哪里呢?在其他毒品都是非法的情况下，它是如何被社会所接受的?威尔·廷格尔采访了博斯学院的校长简·佩顿。
简:自从有了可以发酵的糖来源以来，酒精就一直存在，所以如果你想到水果、树根或树液。所以最早的酒精饮料实际上并不是饮料。会有发酵的水果从树上掉下来，腐烂在地上，动物们会吃掉它。原始人会把它吃掉的。所以我们说的是在过去的1亿年里，那是果树出现的时候。
威尔:想到第一批喝醉酒的动物可能是恐龙，这是件好事。
简- <笑>。你知道吗，我从没想过这个。但如果它们吃水果，就有可能。绝对的。
这花了相当长的时间，但最终人类开始消费酒精。在什么时候这些酒像啤酒和葡萄酒一样，在什么时候它们变得更受欢迎?
简:嗯，我们得看看文字记录的历史记录，在史前，文字记录很少。所以你看看考古证据，考古学家发现了高加索地区酿酒的证据。这是大约6000年前高加索地区的格鲁吉亚国家有意酿造葡萄酒和拥有葡萄酒工业的最早证据。所以如果你看考古证据，你可以追溯到它的年代。这并不意味着它从那时就开始了。这只意味着证据可以追溯到那个时候。所以这比我们所知道的日期要早几百年，也许几千年。当人们在7000年前开始有意制造酒精饮料时，比如葡萄酒和啤酒。这是一种由大米、葡萄、蜂蜜和另一种水果制成的饮料的考古证据。所以这是一种组合，实际上就像鸡尾酒。 But we know for sure that by the time writing came about, cuneiform in what's now Iran and Iraq, we know that there are written records and evidence of people enjoying wine, high status people, drunk wine, beer was the drink for everybody. So beer and wine were the two drinks that we definitely know about because of the written evidence.
很明显，酒精在人类中存在了很长时间。如果让你推测一下，你认为与其他违禁物质相比，酒精作为一种被社会接受或合法的药物长期存在的原因是什么?
酒是由食物制成的。所以我们喝的每一种酒精饮料一开始都是可以当食物吃的。所以这种食物来源很普遍。它在家里，在每个人的家里。每个人都需要将食物转化为酒精作为一种保存食物或从中获得更多营养的方式。发酵可以提高食物的营养。这就是所谓的生物赋能。但还有另外一个因素。因为这是一种神奇的超自然的转变，从食物到某种东西，给你这种陶醉的嗡嗡声，这种温和的嗡嗡声，这是一种超自然的元素和神之间的联系。所以如果你崇拜神或女神，你通常会通过喝酒来崇拜他们，你会进入一种改变的状态，你可以与你的神交流。 So it became this socially acceptable and, in fact, mandatory thing to do. If you were a true disciple of your deity, you had to drink alcohol. Alcohol was considered to contain godly essence. So if you're talking about gods and deities and goddesses, then that's a very powerful motivator to drink alcohol. So it became this socially acceptable thing to do. You know, drunkenness was socially acceptable. In fact, it was expected. If you were at a festival to worship your deity, you had to get drunk, basically. Things like wine were restricted to high status people to the rulers. So they would give rules and they would give directives on who was allowed to drink wine. So therefore it became this thing that higher status people drank and so you were proud to drink it. So it becomes part of society. Something else really important as well as the religious element of it, is the alcohol in those days, I'm talking several thousand years ago when humans really started to industrialize the consumption of alcohol. In those days, the level of alcohol was fairly low. Distilled spirits didn't exist by the way. Wild yeast will ferment up to a certain level of alcohol. So you may be lucky to get up to 10%. Really lucky if you could get 10%. so you don't get completely obliterated like you would with some illegal drugs, some hallucinogenic drugs for instance, or nowadays it would be crack, something like that. So you don't get blasted, you just get gently intoxicated and it makes you feel good, but it also makes you sociable and that's really seductive. So you're doing it sociably. You're not just doing this internal intoxication like heroin would be, or hallucinogenic trip would be all about what's happening in your brain. With alcohol, it's all about what's happening in the group and what you're doing with your friends and just be really sociable. Alcohol is a social lubricant and it's been used as a tool for millennia, actually, to bond people together, to bring them together as a community. And it still is actually. You know, we don't think of that, but it really is when you go to a business networking event and most people will have a drink of alcohol and that makes you feel a bit relaxed, you're more likely to be sociable with the new business person who you're meeting. It helps you relax. So all these things together, they're the reasons why alcohol is the drug that we use legally and is the preferred drug.
评论
添加注释