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By Dr. Bruce T. Marshall
October 18, 2009
I am interested in everyday things—the stuff of ordinary life—and
how what is ordinary intersects with deeper currents of meaning.
Usually, we are not aware of these connections, but making links
between the everyday and the larger themes of history can be
illuminating. It can also be fun. It was the fun part that appealed
to me when I read a book entitled A History of the World in Six
Glasses by Tom Standage. I kept thinking, “This would be so much fun
to put into a sermon.” So let’s start there. Maybe some of the
deeper meanings will sneak up on us as we make our way through.
Now what could be more ordinary than taking a drink, of something?
It is essential for survival. The human body can last several weeks
without food, but we can’t survive more than a few days without
liquids. We drink in order to live.
But what we drink, well, there’s a range of possibilities. Tom
Standage divides world history into periods characterized by six
beverages. So hold on to your seats. In the next 25 minutes or so,
we’re going to do a history of the world: from the beginnings of
civilization to the present—and beyond. We’ll consider the six
beverages he identifies, then move on a seventh: the drink most
likely to determine the shape of the future.
● ● ●
Human beings, roughly equivalent to us, have inhabited this earth
for about 50,000 years. Throughout most of that history, our
ancestors lived in small groups of maybe 30 who roved from place to
place in search of food. They fished, they hunted, they gathered
edible plants. But then about 12,000 years ago, a shift occurred.
These early peoples began to farm. Instead of moving to where the
food was, they produced food themselves.
This was an enormous change. It became possible—and necessary—to
establish villages, which then became towns and then cities. With
villages came products such as tools, pottery, wheeled vehicles,
writing—as well as a more complex society. What we define as human
civilization began.
Particularly important in making this transition were cereal crops:
grains such as wheat, barley or oats. Unlike other elements of their
diet, grains could be produced in volume and then stored, providing
a nutritious food that was available year-round. The form in which
the grains were eaten was usually gruel, that is, grain mixed with
water, like our oatmeal which at its simplest is oats and water.
The grains produced by early peoples were kept in storage pits until
they were needed. But it’s hard to make a storage pit water-tight.
Sometimes it rained, and the grains stored in these pits would get
wet. What happens when grain gets wet? First of all, the starches in
the grains convert to sugar. They become sweet, which makes them
more palatable. Early peoples favored gruel that had been exposed to
this process over the unsweetened variety.
But then something else happens. Let’s say you mix up a batch of
sweet watery gruel and don’t finish it. You let it sit for a few
days. As it sits, the sugar in the gruel attracts natural yeasts
from the air. The yeast consumes the sugar and after a while that
gruel acquires a certain fizziness. What’s just occurred? Beer. Beer
has happened. Just about every early civilization relied upon grain
mixed into gruel for the first staple of its diet, and just about
every early civilization discovered beer. It can be said that beer
and civilization are synonymous; you don’t get one without the
other.
Beer made several contributions to life. For one, it was healthy.
Beer was a source of B vitamins but, more importantly, it was safer
to drink than the water. Early human settlements almost always had
contaminated water supplies, but the alcohol in beer removed
disease-carrying organisms. Drinking beer also produced a sense of
well-being. And so it became associated with social occasions, times
when people came together to enjoy each other’s company.
Early cuneiform tablets feature images of a large pottery jar with
long straws coming from the center, people gathered around drinking
from them. This is how beer was served: from a single jar, straws
reaching through the layer of solids that would float to the top,
down into the liquid portion. Everyone drank from the same
container. One benefit to this practice was that you were unlikely
to be poisoned by your host—always a possibility—since he was
drinking from the same jar as you were. Similarly, whatever social
differences might exist among those who have gathered were deemed
unimportant. All drank from the same container. So sharing beer
signified gathered in an atmosphere of trust and acceptance.
Today, that early meaning remains. Going out for a beer suggests
meeting as equals. I’m remembering this past summer there was a
widely publicized “beer summit” in which the president of the United
States met for a beer with two people who had been involved in an
altercation: an African-American professor at Harvard and a white
policeman from Cambridge, Massachusetts. The message was: we can get
together, exchange our views as equals, and resolve our differences.
So we have beer: the first drink of civilization. The beginnings of
civilized society coincided with the discovery of beer. And sharing
beer became a ritual expressing friendship and equality.
● ● ●
The second beverage, like beer, also occurs naturally. It’s just as
old but unlike beer has functioned to stress differences in society.
If beer is the great equalizer, wine has expressed stratification.
From ancient times until the present, wine reveals social standing.
It has also played a role in developing modern thought: philosophy,
science, law.
Let’s go back to the beginnings. Most fruits contain a certain
amount of sugar, and their skins attract wild yeast. The yeast
interacts with the sugar to produce fermentation. Some fruits have
more available sugars than others and so they are more likely to
support this process. Grapes, particularly. Leave freshly squeezed
grape juice in the open air, and it ferments. In this regard, wine
is like beer: it just happens.
But wine was different from beer in that the raw materials—that is,
grapes—were not so abundantly available to early peoples. Everybody
had cereal grains for making beer, but grapes grew in specialized
regions, often mountainous areas so it was hard to transport. Thus,
wine was easily available only to those who lived in regions where
grapes grew naturally. Everybody else had to pay transportation
costs. And so wine came to represent wealth, power, privilege. Only
the wealthy and powerful could get it.
The Mediterranean regions had the benefit of a climate friendly to
wine grapes and so wine became part of everyday life, as it still is
in Greece and Italy. In these regions developed a ritualized way of
serving wine. Men of power would gather in a special room, which was
separate from those designated for everyday living. This room had a
particular purpose: drinking wine and sharing in conversation in
what was called a symposion.. The size of the room controlled the
numbers that could participate—about a dozen usually and certainly
no more than 30.
The men sat on couches, in a reclining position, and were served
rounds of wine, diluted with water. The topics of their conversation
ranged widely, but in ancient Greece there was a particular interest
in the pursuit of wisdom, that is, philosophy. The symposion—this
meeting for wine and conversation in a room designated for that
purpose—became the context for developing ancient Greek philosophy,
which to this day stands as the foundation of Western thought.
The symposion followed a particular model for determining what was
true. It was to present one point of view, then the opposing
position. These two sides were tested against each other, using
reasoned arguments and dialogue. That format of civilized
competition continues to this day. In politics, for example, the
Democrats present their version of things, the Republicans present
theirs, and then the voters determine which has offered a more
convincing case. The same pattern applies in court: lawyers for one
side present their version of truth, lawyers for the other present
their own, and the judge or the jury determines which prevails.
Ancient Greek philosophical thought put a high value on moderation:
avoiding extremes of either side. Perhaps that attitude developed
from the experience of drinking wine at a symposion. They strongly
disapproved of drinking so much that one loses one’s rational
faculties. As Plutarch put it, “The drunkard is insolent and rude.”
But they also distrusted one who completely abstained from wine.
Again, Plutarch, “The complete teetotaler is disagreeable...” And
the philosopher, Plato, argued that drinking wine with a companion
at a symposion is the most reliable way to determine another’s
character.
Hence wine. It became a symbol of sophistication, first because of
its expense. And then through its association with learned
discussion. Today’s dinner party featuring wine and conversation
continues a pattern established in ancient Greece.
● ● ●
For our third beverage, we go to the Arab world around the first
millennium, 1,000 CE. This was an era in which Islamic scholars led
the way in developing astronomy, mathematics, medicine, and
philosophy. They created algebra, navigation through the use of a
compass, and pioneered the use of herbs as anesthetics. Arab
scholars also developed a technique that involves vaporizing a
liquid and then re-condensing it, thus purifying and concentrating
the liquid. In other words: distillation. This technique was used
for perfumes and medicines. It also produced distilled liquors.
This technology traveled from the laboratories of Muslims, who did
not drink alcohol, to the nations of Europe where this was not an
issue. It was at the beginning of what has been called the Age of
Exploration, when ships leaving the ports of Europe set forth to
sail the seas, discovering lands previously unknown to the
Europeans. It was the first era of globalization.
There is a relationship between distilled alcohol and exploration.
When traveling to far-distant lands, the explorers needed money—a
universally accepted currency. So the ships loaded with items to
offer in trade: textiles, guns, gold and silver, jewelry, and
various other items. But these were bulky, heavy, and their
acceptance was uncertain. It didn’t take long to realize that the
most desired commodity Europeans had to offer was alcohol. The ships
stocked barrels of wine, but far better for purposes of trade were
brandy, rum, and whiskey. These distilled drinks had a higher
alcohol content, took up less space on a ship, didn’t spoil, and
they were widely accepted in trade for goods and services.
The most significant of these was rum. Rum is made from molasses,
which is a by-product from sugar production. It was thought to be
useless—people wanted sugar, not molasses. But when converted into
rum, it acquired value and was used particularly for one form of
trade. That was the slave trade. Slave hunters were paid in rum to
secure slaves, newly captured slaves were given rum to pacify them
and keep them under control, and then the slaves were sold for more
rum. It is hard to imagine that slave trading would have become as
extensive as it was without rum to serve both as currency and as a
mean of keeping both crew and slaves under control.
Rum also played a role in the founding of this nation. Early on, rum
became the favorite drink of the colonists. Since rum was made from
molasses produced in the Western hemisphere, it was abundant and
inexpensive. Rum became part of business practices. When parties
agreed on a contract, they drank rum to seal the deal. Or when
property changed hands or upon agreement on a legal dispute or to
influence voters. When he ran for election to Virginia’s local
assembly in 1758, George Washington’s campaign team distributed 28
gallons of rum to voters. Also 50 gallons of rum punch, 34 gallons
of wine, 46 gallons of bear, and two of hard cider. All this in a
county with only 391 voters.
The importance of rum in the colonies was not lost on the British.
They were disturbed that rum was made from molasses originating in
French colonies of the Western hemisphere. The French were
profiting, the British were left out, and so they sought to even up
the score by imposing a tax on rum. The colonists were outraged,
many simply ignored it, and tax collectors were subject to
harassment. Seeds of resistance were planted that later grew into
revolution.
And so the third beverage: distilled spirits. The influence of this
beverage has taken many turns since the process was perfected in the
laboratories of Arab scholars—from its use as world-wide currency to
its role in the slave trade to helping foment revolution in this
country. The effects have been for good and for ill, but this
beverage must be included among those that have changed the world.
● ● ●
For much of early Western European history, people lived in an
alcoholic haze. Alcohol in some form was consumed by men, women, and
children from breakfast until bedtime. It was the safest form of
liquid available and so was just about essential to life.
That began to change in the 1600s with the introduction of a new
drink. This was made with boiled water, which sterilized it as
alcohol had. And those who partook of it discovered that they could
think more clearly, work longer hours, be more productive. This was
the drink that accompanied the philosophy of the Enlightenment which
promoted a rational approach to challenges of the human condition
and that ushered in the ideal of progress through human effort. This
new drink was coffee.
The custom of drinking coffee began in 15th century Yemen, an
Islamic society. It was first used in religious ceremonies to keep
participants awake during all-night rituals. Coffee had a particular
attractiveness to Islamic society since the prophet Mohammed had
forbidden the use of alcoholic beverages.
But the appeal of coffee was not limited to the Islamic world. By
the mid 1600s, coffee houses appeared in centers of Western culture,
such as London, where they offered an alternative to the pubs.
Establishments that served alcohol tended to be dark, loud and
rowdy, with patrons breaking into song at one moment, fights in the
next. Coffee houses were different. They were well lit, stylishly
decorated, lined with bookshelves, offering an ideal setting for
rational discussion. Freedom of speech became a fervent value among
those who frequented coffee houses. In these calm environs, many a
political movement—and more than a few revolutions—were birthed.
The popularity of coffee also coincided with the development of
capitalism. Those involved in commercial enterprises found that with
coffee, they could think more clearly, work harder and longer. And
if a businessman in 17th century Europe sought the latest news of
commerce, he would head straight for the nearest coffee house which
functioned as an early information superhighway. The European coffee
house became the center for philosophical reflection, commercial
endeavors, and political intrigue.
So today when we meet at Starbucks or Mayorga to hammer out ideas
for a new dot com, or connect to the Internet to find out what’s
happening in the world, or add an entry to our blog, or talk through
a matter of concern—all given more urgency by the caffeine and sugar
in the drinks before us, well, we’re participating in the long and
honorable tradition of the coffee house.
● ● ●
Drink #5. The British fell head over heals in love—with tea. Problem
was that tea came from China, which is a long way off. So they had
to import their favorite and most fashionable beverage. Some say
that a driving force behind creating the British Empire—upon which
the sun never set—was the need to secure a reliable supply of tea.
Tea leaves had been used for thousands of years as an
antiseptic—people noticed that rubbing them on wounds hastened
healing. Ancient peoples also chewed tea leaves because of the
invigorating feeling that ensued. The earliest references to the
practice of infusing tea into boiling water and then drinking date
back to the first century BCE in China, where tea made the
transition from medicinal herb to domestic beverage.
Tea became widely popular throughout China, India, Japan and other
sections of the far east, where it developed into a symbol of
culture and sophistication. Tea was served with elaborate
ceremony—the Japanese tea ceremony, for example, is an intricate
ritual that seems to encapsulate the whole of Japanese culture. And
in China, drinking parties featured tea as the centerpiece.
Europeans first encountered tea in the early 1600s when their ships
sailed into Chinese harbors. But tea was not what they were looking
for, and it took a while to catch on. At the beginning of the 1700s,
almost nobody in Britain drank tea. But by the end that century,
almost everybody did.
The rise of tea in Great Britain can be attributed to several
factors. First of all, it became fashionable. It was an exotic drink
of royalty, then tea made its way into the rest of British society.
A second factor was the British East India Company, a private
company that secured a monopoly on the export/import business
between Great Britain and the Far East. Tea was an ideal commodity
for a shipping company: inexpensive at its ports of origin, light
and compact. Through its efforts, tea became widely available in
Great Britain.
Then in 1717, the owner of a London coffee house named Thomas
Twining opened a shop next door that sold tea. The intended audience
was women. Coffee shops were men-only establishments, but this new
tea shop welcomed women and offered both tea leaves to take home and
cups of tea to consume on the premises. Women came to the new tea
shops to get out of their homes and make contacts with other women.
Tea parties became events for women of privilege and from there, the
British appetite for tea extended to all classes and to both women
and men. By the mid 1700s, foreign visitors observed that even the
humblest servant must have tea twice a day.
The popularity of tea in Great Britain was associated with the
nation’s rise to world dominance, both as an imperialist power and a
center of industrial production. During the mid 1700s—about the same
time as tea was conquering Great Britain—there was a dramatic change
in manufacturing techniques. Products that had for generations been
created by craftspeople, now were manufactured in factories. Where
skilled humans had created products from start to finish, now the
process was broken down into segments that relied upon labor saving
machines. Workers in these new factories faced long hours,
monotonous work, and dangerous conditions. A moment’s inattention
could result in a lost finger, a lost arm, a lost life. The
proprietors of these factories realized that it was to their benefit
to grant a morning and afternoon tea break. Both the rest and the
caffeine in the tea refreshed workers, enabled them to go on longer.
Tea also offered disinfectant qualities that diminished
susceptibility to disease among the workers. As the author of this
book observed, “Tea was the lubricant that kept the factories
running smoothly.”
So the cup of tea we enjoy today brings with it a long and mixed
history. Tea was the beverage that fueled the British Empire, that
helped empower women, that made it economically beneficial to the
British to rule India and to subdue China, and that went
hand-in-hand with its development as an industrial power. Today, if
you happen to visit England, you know that the country still
effectively shuts down twice a day so that the country can have its
break for tea.
● ● ●
I’ll introduce the sixth beverage with a quotation which is
attributed to Robert Goizuetta, in 1997. At the time, he was the
chief executive of the Coca-Cola Company.
He observed:
● A billion hours ago, human life appeared on earth.
●
A billion minutes ago, Christianity emerged.
●
A billion seconds ago, the Beatles changed music.
● A billion Coca-Colas ago was yesterday morning.
The twentieth century was an age of globalization when we began to
see ourselves as citizens of the world. The twentieth century has
also been called the American Century, when this nation became
dominant. And wherever the United States of America asserted its
influence, there also was Coca-Cola.
Coca-Cola had its beginnings in May of 1886 when a pharmacist in
Atlanta named John Pemberton invented a new drink. This was an era
in which pharmacists turned out all manner of remedies promising to
cure a host of ills. Most of these were both useless and harmless,
but some were actually dangerous. Pemberton was an experienced
producer of quack remedies, some of which had produced for him a
reasonable income, but then a run of bad luck put him into
bankruptcy.
In attempting a comeback, he became interested in medicinal
qualities of the leaves of the coca plant. These hailed from South
America where people chewed them for increased energy and sharpness
of mind, the result of a small dose of cocaine that was released in
the process. Wine drinks laced with extracts from coca leaves were
becoming popular, but then the temperance movement struck. Pemberton
experimented with a new concoction which replaced alcohol with the
extract of a nut from West Africa—the kola nut. The resultant elixir
combined extracts from coca leaves with that of the kola nut—along
with other ingredients and a whole lot of sugar to mask the bitter
flavor. The name was obvious: Coca (from the leaves of the coca
plant)-Cola (from the nut of the kola tree).
Coca-Cola was first marketed as both a patent medicine and a
refreshing drink. It was dispensed at pharmacies with a dose of
carbonated water to make it palatable. The timing of this new
product was superb, for it hit the market just in time for a local
Atlanta experiment with prohibition. People sought a non-alcoholic
drink that would still do wonderful things for them. Early Coca-Cola
ads drew on the tradition of patent medicine claims. It was a brain
tonic, a nerve stimulant, a cure for nervous afflictions including
neuralgia, hysteria, and melancholy—as well as an exhilarating,
refreshing, and invigorating beverage. By the time Atlanta ended its
experiment with prohibition in 1887, Coca-Cola was already well
established. (And by the way, the trace of cocaine was removed in
the early 20th century, though Coca-Cola still contains non-narcotic
elements of the coca leaves.)
Let’s fast-forward to World War II. By this time, Coca-Cola was a
much-beloved American brand and was sold in a few foreign countries,
but it had not yet established a global reach. That all changed when
the United States abandoned its isolationist policies and entered
World War II. The president of the Coca-Cola company issued an order
that Coke be available to every American in uniform for 5 cents a
bottle, no matter where in the world he or she was, and no matter
what it cost the company. This was quite a commitment, yet it had
many beneficial results.
For one, it got the company exempted from sugar rationing, so Coke
continued to be produced throughout the war. For another, it
identified Coke firmly with the American way. As one G. I. put it in
a letter home, “If anyone were to ask us what we were fighting for,
we think half of us would answer, the right to buy Coca-Cola.” In
order to supply the military with Coke, the company built bottling
plants right behind the American lines. When a new region came under
Allied control, Coke moved right in. At least 64 military bottling
plants were created during World War II.
That pattern has continued. A clear sign of an openness to American
influence and culture is the availability of Coke. Such as, when the
Berlin Wall fell, Coca-Cola was close behind.
And so the sixth beverage, harbinger of the American Century: this
odd product of a pharmacist’s lab in Georgia. Today the term,
“Coca-Cola” is the second most commonly understood phrase in the
world, behind only, “OK.”
●
● ●
Hence, six beverages that have played a role alongside the
development of human civilization in both secular and religious
realms. Sometimes for better, sometimes for worse, but the influence
is unquestionable.
So what comes next? What’s the seventh beverage that will express
the challenges and opportunities of the years ahead? The author of
this book makes a suggestion of what that drink will be, and I
agree. Throughout the lifetimes of everyone here, and our children,
and probably our children’s children, one beverage will define the
future—who prospers and who doesn’t.
That beverage: water. Plain old water.
Ironic, isn’t it? After millennia of beverages that could attain
quite a degree of sophistication, we’ve come back to the beginning,
the basis for all these beverages. Water.
We live in a world whose population is constantly increasing, and in
which the demands on the earth’s resources are constantly
increasing. Yet, the earth isn’t getting bigger. The world’s water
supply is the same as when the dinosaurs ruled the planet. In the
developing world, access to water is a matter of life or death. In
the developed world, the availability of water determines whether a
community has a future or not. And the old problem of securing a
clean source of water returns, as ever new forms contamination make
themselves known.
And so we end this tour of world history with a challenge. We’ve
seen how beverages have both expressed and influenced the
development of world civilization. The future will be determined by
how we manage that simplest of beverages, water.
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