BEER AND CIVILIZATION.

BEER AND CIVILIZATION. I linked here to an important article by Malcolm Gladwell about how coffee may have created the Industrial Revolution (“One way to explain the industrial revolution is as the inevitable consequence of a world where people suddenly preferred being jittery to being drunk.”) Realclearpolitics, Instapundit, and the Volokh Conspiracy have all posted on this article by George Will about the importance of beer for civilization. Will draws upon Steven Johnson’s book: THE GHOST MAP: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic — and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World. Johnson points out that in ages past, alcohol was a safe alternative to water, and says, “Dying of cirrhosis of the liver in your forties was better than dying of dysentery in your twenties.” Genes have now been located on chromosome four in human DNA, which enable people who have these genes to process alcohol, to “hold their liquor.” The argument is that people who could hold their liquor had an evolutionary advantage which enabled them to live in towns.