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Uncorking the Past: The Quest for Wine, Beer, and Other Alcoholic Beverages Review by Christopher Muir Patrick E. McGovern
Berkeley: Univ of California Press, 2009.
$29.95/Hardcover

Baccanalysis

Primates clearly have a taste for alcohol. This is hardly surprising, since the frequently frugivorous mammals regularly encounter the inebriating substance—a byproduct of yeast's metabolism of plant sugars—in their diet. Spider monkeys of Central America consume the equivalent of two bottles of wine in half an hour while feeding upon ripe palm fruit (cf. Plate I, McGovern). Chimpanzees and rats (a non-primate mammal) given unlimited quantities of alcohol in the lab will binge before settling into a routine of sustained lubrication. These studies attest to what Robert Dudley has argued is an "ancestral predilection for ethanol consumption during frugivory."

That modern humans not far into their Neolithic domestications of plant and animal directed ample quantities fruit, honey, and grain to fermented beverages attests to a primeval yearning. McGovern argues for an even earlier encounter between humans and fermented beverages (his Paleolithic hypothesis), consistent with his belief that production of fermented beverages stimulated further agricultural development (see below). Imbued with a proclivity for sweet fruit, early humans might have tried overripe grape or honey, naturally fermented by free-living yeast, and taken to the obvious psychotropic effects. In the absence of firm archeological evidence, McGovern admits that his speculative hypothesis is currently "unprovable."

I.

"A Neolithic grog from China, dating back to 7000 B.C., challenges the conventional notion that civilization began in the Near East." (60)

McGovern sees a causal arrow between organized production of fermented beverages and the development of civilized society. In a 2004 paper, McGovern and colleagues state:

Because of their perceived pharmacological, nutritional, and sensory benefits, fermented beverages thus have played key roles in the development of human culture and technology, contributing to the advance and intensification of agriculture, horticulture, and food-processing techniques.

The same idea permeates his book. Before evaluating this hypothesis more critically, let us examine how he arrives at it. The same paper reports on 16 sherds (fragments of pottery) from containers in Jiahu Provence in China that superficially resemble much later Chinese drinking vessels. The chemical and archeobotanical analysis indicate that the vessels contained a mixed beverage of fruit (most likely a wild grape species and hawthorn), honey, and rice. Although there is no definitive evidence for fermentation (alcohol quickly evaporates or is consumed by microbes), it is almost surely the case that free-living yeast in the fruit and honey acted upon this Neolithic grog. Not only is the Jiahu grog the world's earliest evidence of fermented beverage production, but it predates intensification of other cultural activities discernible in the archeological record, possibly indicating a close relationship between fermented beverages and heady developments on other fronts of human achievement.

II.

Did civilization develop under the influence of fermented beverages? First, it is not clear to me, a neophyte to anthropology, what constitutes "civilization." For simplicity, consider McGovern's more limited statement that alcoholic beverages contributed "to the advance and intensification of agriculture, horticulture, and food-processing techniques." By freeing labor and supporting dense population centers, intensive agricultural presumably precedes advanced civilization. McGovern's is an interesting hypothesis, but can one be sure that causation did not run the other way (intensive agricultural permitted producing alcoholic beverages) or that both were not the product of a third factor?

If McGovern's hypothesis is correct, then archeological evidence of fermentation should be found shortly before evidence of intensive agriculture. As mentioned above, the Jiahu grog preceded much agricultural intensification in China, although rice may have been domesticated about the same time. Another provocative story comes from the Americas. The few small kernels of teosinte (Zea mays ssp. parviglumous), the unremarkable progenitor of maize (Z. mays ssp. mays), provide a meager nutritional reward only after great difficulty. It is difficult to see why early humans, without foreknowledge of maize's eventual success as a staple crop, would have bothered to cultivate such a plant. McGovern proposes teosinite may have been initially used for chicha, a corn wine. Over time, selection by humans might have eventually produced a promising food source. It is a speculative idea, but if true, would support McGovern idea that fermented beverages precede and enable agricultural intensification.

If McGovern is correct, the counterfactual statement must also be false: If fermented beverages did not intensify agriculture, another impetus would have. I know too little about the history of fermented beverages and agricultural technology to evaluate this question. Unfortunately, McGovern does not provide sufficient information in Uncorking to conclude anything on what should be an organizing theme of the work. This deficiency is symptomatic of much that irritated me about the book.

III.

Uncorking falls into a genre of "academic book for the non-specialist". Published by an academic press, the scope of the subject and physical distribution are too limited as pertains to popular science; the scholarship and style are too rough for a scholarly work. A paragon of the genre, especially in the sciences, should provide an engaging, accessible synthesis of research and methods addressing competing ideas about a compelling question. To McGovern's advantage, the origin of man's most legendary culinary invention is intrinsically interesting to all but the most devout teetotaler. Sadly, he squanders his bounty on rambling prose, poorly fashioned, about amorphous central themes. The chapters are organized geographically, obscuring important ideas regarding the causes and consequences of fermented beverages in human cultural evolution. By not focusing on the pertinent scientific hypotheses, McGovern fails to clearly communicate how his research supports or refutes their predictions, or at the very least outline what data would.

He also fails to provide even a cursory explanation of the seemingly arcane molecular methods he applies in his research (e.g. liquid chromatography-mass spectroscopy). It is an unfortunate omission. The methods are not conceptually difficult to grasp and one of McGovern's primary contributions is applying rigorous molecular techniques to questions traditionally the purview of cultural anthropology. I suspect that the poor expository execution of Uncorking will restrict the dissemination of some important research.