Article Index
Age of Alcohol
Age of Alcohol 2
Age of Alcohol 3
Age of Alcohol 4
All Pages
A Brief (and rather incomplete) History of Alcohol


Scientists have debated the notion that beer, not bread, was actually the start of the development for agriculture. The fact that there is debate in this at all is rather baffling in itself. Really, bread starts out all doughy, and you have to kneed it, let it rise, bake in an oven, and risk burning it if you don’t know what you’re doing. Not the kind of thing that we faerie folk were going to trust in the hands of such a young species as the humans of the time. They’d just make a mess of the whole kitchen.

Beer, on the other hand, is something that will develop on its own if you just mix things together and leave them alone for a while. Much more the speed for humans to handle!

Mesopotamian Beer Faerie
Over 10,000 years ago: Mesopotamia
Faeries encouraged the Mesopotamians to start brewing. In fact, alcohol is a word of Mesopotamian origin. The product of ancient times was different from the varieties of today, being that we were still experimenting and all. However, it would still be recognizable as alcohol if you could pick up a pint of it now.

Egyptian Beer Faerie
3100 BC: Egypt
The Egyptians definitely loved to make beer. In fact, beer was deified, which the faeries really thought was appropriate. I suspect that the cats were a bit jealous, though, having to share the spotlight and all. Cats don’t seem to like that much.

People drank beer for many reasons. They saw that it was full of nutritious grains and tasted a lot better than icky Nile water. Beer was made as offerings to the Gods.

Asar (also known as Osiris) became the god of alcohol and was worshiped everywhere. Some faeries protested, but after the guy got chopped to pieces by his brother and put back together by his wife, the faeries figured they’d give him a break.

Everyone drank beer, no matter their age. They even made sure the dead had some to take to the afterlife. That’s a rather nice thing to do, really. After the whole ordeal of dying and going through the mummification process, one would need a good stiff drink.

Chinese Beer Faerie

China
The Chinese made some really yummy beer out of honey, rice, and fruit. Okay, so it was more of a wine, but still very tasty. They were always sure to serve alcohol to guests, which the Beer Faeries greatly approve of. Their word for alcohol is Jiu and they dubbed it food for the spirit. Spirits everywhere rejoiced. Like the Egyptians, the Chinese used alcohol in religious practices.

2700 BC: Babylon
More Gods of alcohol started to pop up and it started to feel like the humans had totally forgotten that it was the faeries who taught them to make the stuff in the first place. This made some faeries kind of cheesed off. They started to make a habit out of banging on the skulls of humans recovering from drunkenness as punishment for abusing beer like that.

It was around this time that grumpy old Hammurabi decided to make some laws to regulate beer commerce and whatnot. If a barkeep ripped off the customers, they were to be drowned. Getting a good head pounding from an angry faerie is light by comparison.