Talk:History of alcoholic drinks

Topic and title
This appears to be an "History of alcoholic consumption," not a "History of alcoholic beverages." A reader seeking out this article to learn when and where different distilled beverages were developed would be sorely disappointed (the development of whisky, rum and gin are barely mentioned; brandy, vodka, and tequila not at all.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.138.144.162 (talk) 17:54, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

NPOV dispute
The suggestion that non-drinkers are underrepresented in history seems not only preposterous but also is unfair to drinkers. Wnissen 06:40, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Suggestion has been deleted
Dr. Darby's observation, identified below, has been removed:

After reviewing extensive evidence regarding the widespread but generally moderate use of alcoholic beverage, the historian Darby makes a most important observation: all these accounts are warped by the fact that moderate users "were overshadowed by their more boisterous counterparts who added 'color' to history." Thus, the intemperate use of alcohol throughout history receives a disproportionate amount of attention. Those who abuse alcohol cause problems, draw attention to themselves, are highly visible and cause legislation to be enacted. The vast majority of drinkers, who neither experience nor cause difficulties, are not noteworthy. Consequently, observers and writers largely ignore moderation. David Justin

Merge suggestion

 * I'd say leave this as a separate article. Alcoholic beverage is already quite long, and (in general) 'X' and 'History of X' are not the same thing. --Squiddy 11:06, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
 * I concur. Wikipedia already has a warning on the size of articles being too long.

More recent history
This is ancient history. We should get some more recent history in here, too! --Liface 00:44, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree. Would "History of alcohol in the ancient world," or something to that effect, be a better title? --BDD 15:25, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Osiris, God of whaaa?
Under the sub-headline Egypt, it states that Osiris is the Egyptian God of wine. I found that surprising, and I can't see anywhere else, (including the Osiris page) where it says that. Is it true? Can we get some sources? SweetNeo85 05:44, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Plagarism
A copy-and-paste largely from the "history of alcohol and drinking around the world" link provided at the bottom. I doubt the PhD whom wrote it would have given his work to the public domain. But I would happily be proven wrong. The fact that the references are given without the actual notes that those references refer to are a dead giveaway. Fix the citations if this IS approved for the public domain.


 * I emailed David J. Harmon, the author of the text on which this article is based and putatively the same person as User:David Justin who created the page, to make sure this wasn't a copyright violation. He responded, "I posted those articles with the understanding that I relinquished copyright by doing so." --Fl e x (talk|contribs) 14:17, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Proposed merger
I proposed a merger with Alcohol in the early modern period and Alcohol in Colonial America. Those articles are quite long and perhaps should retain their status as independent articles, but their contents should at least be given a summary and a link here. The history of alcohol did not end with ancient Greece. --Fl e x (talk|contribs) 14:57, 14 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I diagree. There history of alcohol in other countries. And this article can have sections that have their own seperate articles. Miaers 22:45, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't think we're talking about mutually exclusive options here. Certainly there are some unique developments by country/region (perhaps some of these are even worthy of their own articles), but there is also a general historical flow. The problem is that this article only discusses the ancient world. What about medieval developments? What about modern developments? That's where this merger proposal comes in: give (at least) a summary of those other articles here. --Fl e x (talk|contribs) 00:43, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Source
Hi Flex- History of Alcohol and Drinking around the World was the source of "History of alcohol" when it was begun so listing it as "Source" rather than as an "External link" would be more accurate. You suggested as an alternative listing it with the material derived from it. Please note that, with the exception of one sentence, all material in "History of alcohol" derives from History of Alcohol and Drinking around the World. Thanks. David Justin 17:04, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

GA review
Without going over the article in detail, the text seems pretty good. The primary obstacle to this article obtaining GA status are the references. To wit, nearly all of the many references are to a single article, which is also the source of much of the text. The public domain source article itself, however, gives plenty of inline citations for its claims, and those should be incorporated here directly to make clear what the sources really are. I'll put the review on hold pending this fix. --Fl e x (talk|contribs) 13:43, 9 April 2007 (UTC)


 * The on hold period for this article has expired, the concerns above were clearly not met. The article will have to fail this nomination. Good luck in the future. IvoShandor 07:38, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Intro?
The purposeful production of alcoholic beverages is common in all cultures and reflects their cultural and religious peculiarities just as the geographical and sociological conditions.

I thought the native peoples of the Americas did not have alcohol until the arrival of the Europe? Arthurian Legend 18:56, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

What's with these two sentences: Widespread alcohol use probably began only after the appearance of agriculture (Eaton, Shostak, and Konner 1988). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers by Richard B. Lee and Richard Daly) and often reflects their cultural and religious peculiarities as much as their geographical and sociological conditions. The parentheses are messed up and I'm not sure what the Cambridge Encyclopedia is used as a reference for. Apemanjy 05:41, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

China
I have restored deleted material and sourced it to Ancient Wine by Patrick McGovern. JFD 21:24, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

"The earliest evidence of alcohol in China are wine jars from Jiahu which date to about 7000 BC, making China the first in the world to develop alcoholic beverages.[6]"

How so, when at the start of the article it states alcoholic beverages were made in 10,000 BC? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.21.217.23 (talk) 14:52, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Alcohol content??
The point that alcohol has been universally viewed as a "good thing" is really being drummed home here. I think references to sailors' daily rations being "a gallon of beer" might be tempered by the fact that this beer was relatively quite low in alcohol content? Ditto the beer of ancient Egypt (see Wikipedia article on ancient Egyptian cuisine). And in fact I suspect that much of the alcohol which you say was favoured throughout history was in fact of similarly low alcohol content. This is what enabled people to rely on it in place of their rather dubious and even dangerous water supply! I would like to see the actual alcohol content of these "alcoholic drinks" researched and discussed in the article, in the interests of accuracy. In many instances I know the historic drinks you mention were in fact very low in alcohol, which may have been why drunkenness wasn't an issue. Amity150 07:40, 8 June 2007 (UTC)


 * While I can't formulate an opinion on anything before the medieval age, drinks of the time were only slightly lower in alcohol content than current drinks, and the alcohol content could be significantly higher around the late medieval age. Note though that there were various grades among drinks like beer dependant on alcohol content. See MARTIN, AUSTIN LYNN, 'Old people, alcohol and identity in Europe, 1300-1700', Food, Drink and Identity: Cooking, Eating and Drinking in Europe since the Middle Ages. Ed. Peter SCHOLLIERS. Pp. xi, 223. Oxford: Berg. (2001), 119 or  MARTIN, AUSTIN LYNN, 'Alcohol, sex, and gender in late medieval and early modern Europe', (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2001). Martin also suggests that drunkenness was more a psychological than a physiological phenomenon. Vadigor (talk) 13:23, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Darby reference
What is this sentence supposed to mean? "Consequently, observers and writers largely ignore moderation" Observers and writers largely ignore claims of moderation? That fits with the first half of the paragraph, but how does it fit with the second? How does it follow from there being a bias to report excesses?

Is it that there are a lot of Egyptian historical sources that report excessive consumption? That isnt made clear in the article either.

The beginning of the paragraph suggests ancient Egyptians were moderate in their alcohol consumption. The middle of the paragraph suddenly reminds us that there is a bias in historical reporting to report excessive consumption. That seems utterly irrelevant in context. The final sentence has no clear meaning and certainly does provide any insight into what the gist of the paragraph is supposed to be.

Please could the contributor of this paragraph rephrase it in a more coherent manner and clarify whatever qualification is being made by the Darby reference.

Measurement
Please note the measure gallon is used throughout this article which means that making comparisons is difficult. American readers will no doubt contemplate this article in terms of "US gallons" while all others in the English speaking world will view the article as meaning "Imperial Gallons". Imperial and US gallons are not the same measurement and there are further measurements called "gallon" throughout history. Different US and English readers will get a differing message from reading this article. Other readers may not understand the measurement "gallon". The metric standard of "Litres" should be used to keep this item international instead of US or UK centric. (Moved from article namespace) - Gilliam (talk) 04:35, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Redundant Muslims
Can someone merge the first two paragraphs of the 'Islamic world' subsection, it is essential two times the same thing. Also the section called 'Medieval period' has only this 'Islamic world' subsection, which is weird. In the end it is not even about anything Islamic anymore, it is about the etymology of various European names for alcohol. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.95.111.47 (talk) 10:54, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

1000 year gap?
There seems to be a gap in the history from 300 BC to 700 AD, at least as far as Europe is concerned. I would have expected a section covering the Roman period, so I added a expand-sect template for Rome, but there are probably other significant gaps. -84user (talk) 00:17, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Ethnobotany?
Does the study of alcohol production from one group to another fall under ethnobotany or would it be something else?

For instance different apples or pears used for cider/cidre, herbs used in liqueurs, fruit used for distillation, etc? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.209.14.18 (talk) 03:41, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Fermented Beverage Origins
The statement: "The discovery of late Stone Age beer jugs has established the fact that purposely fermented beverages existed at least as early as c. 10,000 BC.{Patrick, 1952, pp. 12-13}" seems unlikely. The reference is incomplete and useless. The generally accepted first chemical evidence for beer is 5500 BC in Godin Tepe. If someone has a legitimate citation for beer as an "established fact" before that, please put it forward. Otherwise this line should be deleted. Dr Thermo (talk) 21:09, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Seconded. What on earth is the evidence that these vessels were used in the storage or consumption of alcoholic beverages? At the risk of kicking off yet another Wikipedia "my civilisation did X first" priority fight, the same applies to the reference to Chinese wine jugs. In the absence of evidence from analytical chemistry (which, anyway, demonstrates the presence of suggestive plant residues, rather than alcohol itself, which is long gone) these vessels cannot be confidently assigned such a specific function.

Even non-agricultural tribal societies are known to produce alcoholic intoxicants. The principle that plant matter, rotting in the correct conditions, produces a liquid with pleasant side-effects, is probably not a recent discovery. As such it is best to avoid any attempt to argue for world "firsts". The earliest evidence, whatever it currently happens to be, is still hardly proof of invention.

I'll wait on comment here for a couple of days, then go ahead and edit the article. Jamrifis (talk) 16:16, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Pre-10000 B.C.
From http://www2.potsdam.edu/alcohol///////timeline/Alcoholic-Beverages-from-Antiquity-through-the-Ancient-Greeks.html

Pre-10000 B.C.

The earliest alcoholic beverages in the world may have been made from berries or honey. - Blum, Richard H., and Associates. Society and Drugs. San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass, 1969, p. 25; Roueche, Berton. The Neutral Spirit: A Portrait of Alcohol. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1960, p. 8; French, Henry V. Nineteen Centuries of Drink in England: A History. 2nd edition. London: National Temperance Publication Depot, 1890, p. 37.

A variety of alcoholic beverages have been used in China since Paleolithic times (before cir. 10000 B.C.). - Granet, Marcel. Chinese Civilization. London: Barnes & Noble, 1957, p. 144.

These references should be added to the article if the sources are reliable. Can someone please verify them? --94.245.53.33 (talk) 09:41, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

POV

 * ..."religious peculiarities"
 * ...hiding the lack of citations within ref 11? This creates the appearance that much of the content is referenced when it is not. Comments?
 * Barbara (WVS) (talk) 21:51, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

Political movements
Though there are many articles that describe the history of prohibition around the world, isn't there a section about prohibition appropriate in this article? Best Regards,
 * Barbara (WVS) (talk) 21:53, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the. —Community Tech bot (talk) 16:22, 21 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Sakebottle 08-11-2006.jpg

Focus
There is an over-focus on the United States especially in the later modern era. It’s interesting and well-written, but needs a more global perspective. 2607:FEA8:661:3100:10E4:C3F4:8CFA:EAFC (talk) 19:44, 30 May 2022 (UTC)