Michael Shermer vs. "alternative history" Hancock and Crandall

[King of the Americas]

Which I pointed out was wrong.

The most commonly drunk medieval beers were well under 5%.
And many were barely alcoholic (the ones usually drunk by labourers)...more of an energy drink.

The Egyptian texts referring to different styles of beer echo this.
After all, you don't want your labour force pissed the entire time.

I posted evidence of what Egyptian beer was. YOU are the wrong one.

 

[King of the Americas]

Most draught ales (bitters and milds) drunk in pubs in the UK are between 3.8 and 4.1

That sounds like Oklahoma or Kinder Beer! What's the point? I'd wear out a kidney before getting drunk!

 

[King of the Americas]

Bees tend to keep themselves, as do date palms

Right, go try and procure wild honey without a beekeeper suit and report back your findings.

Fair warning...pain and potential anaphylactic shock await.

 

[Andy_Ross]

That sounds like Oklahoma or Kinder Beer! What's the point? I'd wear out a kidney before getting drunk!

Because that's how it's always been made. There are stronger beers available of course usually bottled but as a general rule cask beers are around that strength, you can drink quite a lot before you fall over and just a pint or two are refreshing.
My own two favourite beers are Sam Smiths Old Brewery Bitter at 4 and York Brewery Hansom Blonde at 3.9

Beautiful beers for general consumption.
For 'special occasions' much stronger beers are available of course.
I don't see how you can consider one recipe from Egypt to be the standard for all beers from the distant past.

https://www.samuelsmithsbrewery.co.uk/product/old-brewery-bitter/
http://www.york-brewery.co.uk/Beers/Categories/Permanent-Ales

 

[King of the Americas]

"But at some point the hunter-gatherers learned to maintain the buzz, a major breakthrough. “By the time we became distinctly human 100,000 years ago, we would have known where there were certain fruits we could collect to make fermented beverages,” McGovern says. “We would have been very deliberate about going at the right time of the year to collect grains, fruits and tubers and making them into beverages at the beginning of the human race.” (Alas, archaeologists are unlikely to find evidence of these preliminary hooches, fermented from things such as figs or baobab fruit, because their creators, in Africa, would have stored them in dried gourds and other containers that did not stand the test of time.)

With a supply of mind-blowing beverages on hand, human civilization was off and running. In what might be called the “beer before bread” hypothesis, the desire for drink may have prompted the domestication of key crops, which led to permanent human settlements. Scientists, for instance, have measured atomic variations within the skeletal remains of New World humans; the technique, known as isotope analysis, allows researchers to determine the diets of the long-deceased. When early Americans first tamed maize around 6000 B.C., they were probably drinking the corn in the form of wine rather than eating it, analysis has shown."


Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-beer-archaeologist-17016372/#L6xS71mguoghiHtT.99
Follow us: @SmithsonianMag on Twitter

*Note that the domestication of crops comes BEFORE permanent settlements...?

 

[King of the Americas]

Because that's how it's always been made. There are stronger beers available of course usually bottled but as a general rule cask beers are around that strength, you can drink quite a lot before you fall over and just a pint or two are refreshing.
My own two favourite beers are Sam Smiths Old Brewery Bitter at 4 and York Brewery Hansom Blonde at 3.9

Beautiful beers for general consumption.
For 'special occasions' much stronger beers are available of course.
I don't see how you can consider one recipe from Egypt to be the standard for all beers from the distant past.

https://www.samuelsmithsbrewery.co.uk/product/old-brewery-bitter/
http://www.york-brewery.co.uk/Beers/Categories/Permanent-Ales

Dogfish Head brewed about 3,000 cases of Jiahu, a recipe some 9,000 years old, but I can't find the alcohol content.

 

[John Jones]

So, they were beekeepers and date farmers too...?

You don't need beekeepers to gather honey, nor date farmers to gather dates. Are you claiming otherwise?

 

[King of the Americas]

You don't need beekeepers to gather honey, nor date farmers to gather dates. Are you claiming otherwise?

No. I said try it, and report back your findings.

 

[John Jones]

So, they were beekeepers and date farmers too...?

[...]

I find it hard to believe that ancient wild wheat was a so abundant that it would not need to be cultivated by someone to produce raw materials for multiple 40 gallons of beer fermenting setups.

Appeal to Incredulity - invalid.

Samson gathered honey back in the day in the land of milk and honey. Have you abandoned bronze-age mythology?

 

[Craig B]

Right, go try and procure wild honey without a beekeeper suit and report back your findings.

Fair warning...pain and potential anaphylactic shock await.

Now we know what ancient technological civilisations made beekeeper suits out of. It's in Mark Chap 1.

Now John was clothed with camel’s hair and wore a leather belt around his waist and ate locusts and wild honey​

 

[King of the Americas]

Appeal to Incredulity - invalid.

Samson gathered honey back in the day in the land of milk and honey. Have you abandoned bronze-age mythology?

Really...?

Using the Bible as a reference, haughty.

 

[Craig B]

Really...?

Using the Bible as a reference, haughty.

Yes, now respond to that pre-technological reference to the collection of wild honey as a normal practice.

Or startle us once more by adding some new subject to the compendium of balderdash that is your contribution to this fascinating thread.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Right, go try and procure wild honey without a beekeeper suit and report back your findings.

Fair warning...pain and potential anaphylactic shock await.

Wild honey is still harvested all over the world by people who don't have 'beekeepers suits'.

Do you think bronze and iron age people had 'beekeepers suits'? What about Vikings and Saxons?

 

[Andy_Ross]

Really...?

Using the Bible as a reference, haughty.

Why not? Bronze age myth, it's more than you have and just as valid as any other myth.

 

[Craig B]

Fair warning...pain and potential anaphylactic shock await.

Wild honey is still harvested all over the world by people who don't have 'beekeepers suits'.

Do you think bronze and iron age people had 'beekeepers suits'? What about Vikings and Saxons?

They had "tame honey" so presumably they had "tame bees" to make it for them.

 

[John Jones]

Really...?

Using the Bible as a reference, haughty.

I also use Aesop's Fables as a allusion on occasion.

If it comes down to it, you are more likely to make appeals to legends and fables than I have ever done.

Back to the point: Why couldn't neolithic hunter-gatherers gather honey and dates to make beer, and reduce their need for gathered wild grain? You never thought of that, did you?

 

[Matthew Ellard]

Tomatoes and Potatoes End Stupid Claim

Your fantasy claim, there was an "international trade culture" of 12,500 ago, between the Old and New World is destroyed, as they all "forgot" to exchange potatoes and tomatoes until about 800 years ago.

Forget that potatoes and tomatoes can be eradicated by too much rain...

So every tomato and potato plant and seed, brought there 12,500 years ago, was magically washed away in the old world but all the other old world grains weren't harmed at all. Is that your claim?

So, what about the other direction? Can anyone name some diseases that were brought from the Old World to the New World around 800 years ago? Can these diseases be washed away by rain or a good dose of penicillin?

 

[Matthew Ellard]

More holes in KOTA's international trade 12,500BP

Soooooo....... King of Americas : Do you know what corn is?

If there was international trade 12,500 years ago, between the Old World and New World, why did this not include corn? In reality, corn was brought to the Old World in the 15th Century AD. Can you tidy up your claim for us?

My Claim by King of the Americas / age 10
It is my claim an advanced international trading civilization existed prior to 12,500BP. However a North American glazier melted in 12,500BP destroyed all evidence of this civilisation across the world, but magically preserved all cave and rock paintings, carvings from earlier periods. The flood then washed away any evidence of itself and left no silt layer.

A magical rainfall then happened, that washed away all evidence of New World plants and seeds in the Old World, and all all evidence of Old World plants and seeds in the New World, but no other plants were harmed.

The same magic rainfall also washed away any evidence that the hunter gathers at Göbekli Tepe were advanced although I can't actually say why I think they were any different to normal hunter gatherers.
End of claim

 

[Pacal]

Regarding gathering wild honey. The bottom line is that people have been gathering wild honey for thousands of years. Where do you think mead comes from? Further the !Kung people of the Kalahari desert have been gathering honey from wild bees since who knows when without special suits etc.

Arguments from incredulity are tiresome.

 

[King of the Americas]

The mental gymnastics required to discount fermenting as evidence of advanced agriculture would be impressive if it weren't so sad.

Yesterday I learned more than I'll ever need to know about wild and domestic wheat. Wild wheat is cultivated almost accidentally. In quickly picking off the grain inevitable you drop a kernel or two. The problem is that you lose yield when you increase plant density. You get the same problem with domestic wheat, but you lose a lot few kernels. My reading leads me to draw a distinction between farming domestic wheat and the cultivation of wild wheat. Given the beer making evidences and requirements, there is little doubt that the folks at GT had plenty of grain and they manipulated plants' natural dispersion rates to do it.

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REPOST for EMPHASIS:

"But at some point the hunter-gatherers learned to maintain the buzz, a major breakthrough. “By the time we became distinctly human 100,000 years ago, we would have known where there were certain fruits we could collect to make fermented beverages,” McGovern says. “We would have been very deliberate about going at the right time of the year to collect grains, fruits and tubers and making them into beverages at the beginning of the human race.” (Alas, archaeologists are unlikely to find evidence of these preliminary hooches, fermented from things such as figs or baobab fruit, because their creators, in Africa, would have stored them in dried gourds and other containers that did not stand the test of time.)

With a supply of mind-blowing beverages on hand, human civilization was off and running. In what might be called the “beer before bread” hypothesis, the desire for drink may have prompted the domestication of key crops, which led to permanent human settlements. Scientists, for instance, have measured atomic variations within the skeletal remains of New World humans; the technique, known as isotope analysis, allows researchers to determine the diets of the long-deceased. When early Americans first tamed maize around 6000 B.C., they were probably drinking the corn in the form of wine rather than eating it, analysis has shown."


Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/histor...1mguoghiHtT.99
Follow us: @SmithsonianMag on Twitter

*Note that the domestication of crops comes BEFORE permanent settlements...?