Beer Not Near Sumeria
Well, this is serious business. The earliest evidence of beer is turning up in Kurdistan, but Kurdish noses that should be aloft with pride are instead out of joint, and rightly so. Because some U.S. and Canuck archaeologists apparently assume the technology must have come from Sumeria. Like the Kurds need some flatland, swamp-dwelling Iraqis to teach them how to make beer.
KURDISTAN, WHERE CREDIT IS DUE
By Dr. Mehrdad R. Izady
In correspondence with the prestigious British scientific journal, Nature (Vol.360,5, Nov. 1992, p.24), Rudolph Michel of the Museum of Applied Science, Center for Archaeology, Patrick McGovern of University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania and Vlrginia Badler, Department of Near Eastern Studies, University of Toronto, provide archaeological and laboratory evidence regarding the world’s oldest existing trace of the production of barley beer.
Their investigations took place at the archaeological site of Godin, six miles east of Kangawar in southern Kurdistan in Iran. It was at this same site where, a few years earlier, evidence of the earliest grape wine production (also dating between 4000-4500 years ago) was found by the Royal Ontario Museum of Canada team that originally excavated the site. The disturbing, but not surprising, element in their report is that they attribute the development of beer making technology to the far off Sumerians, just as several years earlier winemaking technology was similarly attributed to the Sumerians.
Yet for the past three generations it has been in Kurdistan where archaeologists have been excavating to find evidence for the invention and development of the technologies that transformed man-the-hunter into man-the-farmer and ultimately into man-the-civilized. It is as if the Kurdish mountains and their inhabitants could not possibly have been the site of technologies of such significance, despite irrefutable evidence that they themselves unearthed. Almost instinctively, archaeologists have been reluctant to attribute origins to the original inhabitants of Kurdistan. Instead, they continue to search for external originating sources, at times with a measure of desperation.
Kurds get dissed a lot. Largest ethnic group without a nation. Now, they won’t even let them have the origins of brewing technology.
(I happen to have a little insight into how the sacred knowledge of how beer got spread around the ancient world, but I’m not talking and I’m pretty sure my buddy Wronwright who got his zulu spear stuck in the Tardis controls and frankly can’t hold his Sumerian mead isn’t going to be talking either. At least until he gets another jar of mead into him. h/t Mental Floss, who is smarter than all of us put together. Anyone who needs to know the background, go to Tim Blair and search “mead.” It isn’t a pretty story.)
Topics: beer, mesopotamia
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 10:19 pm Comments (9) on Wednesday, January 24, 2007
9 Responses to “Beer Not Near Sumeria”
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January 24th, 2007 at 10:32 pm
Wronwright is a Kurd? Who knew?
January 24th, 2007 at 10:35 pm
That guy gets around. As you know.
January 24th, 2007 at 10:42 pm
Floss is quite intelligent, trust me. I know….well so do a ton of others. You mean, Sumerian MeadeWright, don’t you?
January 24th, 2007 at 11:00 pm
That’s him. Good guy to have in a scrape, I’ll say that. Can throw a mead jar with the rest of them.
January 24th, 2007 at 11:35 pm
RebeccaH
“Wronwright is a Kurd?” If I may, a follow up question, please. How much does he whey?
Jules
“Good guy to have in a scrape, I’ll say that. Can throw a mead jar with the rest of them.”
Yeah, just exactly the kind of guy that you’d want, should one have the occasion of walking out of a bar, back to back…plus he’s an attorney, great witness, as when some smart ass tried to throw the first sucker punch and one wound up beating the smart ass, now lying on the floor in tears, to a pulp.
Had a dear friend…NYPD just like that…the shit ass died on me. Loved the guy. Walked out a few back to back with Brooklyn Bob.
January 25th, 2007 at 12:46 am
I always knew the Sumerians were real party animals.
January 25th, 2007 at 2:31 am
Are you sure wronwright hasn’t messed around with the evidence? He’s pretty sneaky, traveling around in that Tardis. You just never know what history he’s been fooling around with.
January 25th, 2007 at 5:49 am
(wronwright wakes up on a cheerful note. He looks out the window. The sun is rising. The blue jays are singing their joyful song. Yes, it’s a fine day. wronwright feels like singing too. He walks to the computer with a hefty cup of steaming hot java to find out what’s going on in the world)
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.
Hey, um. That’s not true. Mead? From ancient Sumeria you say? Hah, how, how could that be? That was thousands of years ago. That’s impossible. Completely ridiculous.
(in soft voice)
crittenden, you snitch. No one here knows about me. They’re not SUPPOSED TO KNOW about me. People read this blog. They respect you. Fools, all of them!
I don’t want people to know about, you know, certain off the book, things. I don’t want Glenn Reynolds, or Scott Johnson, or any of them to know about, things. Karl will absolutely flip!
(lowers voice again)
And for the record, it was paco who stuck my Zulu spear into the controls of the blue box thing. Not me. Apparently he thought he was using a plunger on what he thought was a toilet. Yes, imagine the laughter when I informed him that was actually a steering mechanism. God, talk about the mission from hell. We ended up in 2300 BC Sumeria in the storerooms of Sargon the Great. I have never ran faster than when I chased by Sargon’s guards. But we did get a few kegs of golden mead. For Karl of course.
Now please keep our, unofficial historical record taking missions SECRET! Your loyal readers are obviously rabble and have no clearance.
January 25th, 2007 at 6:28 am
Blast, Wrongwright, of course you’re right. What was I thinking. Must think fast. OK. Ere’hay’s the an-play. Ig-pay Atin-Lay to onfuse-cay our dversaries-ay.