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Period: 10,000 BCE to 4000 BCE
Beer Is First Produced
Beer was discovered rather than created. It originates from cereal grains and through a process was turned into a certain gruel which becomes beer. Beer was more accessible than wine or mead at the time as it could be made abundantly and could be stored easier in comparison. -
Period: 9000 BCE to 4000 BCE
Wine Is First Produced
Wine is first produced in the Zangrose Mountains. Wine was very limited in quantity because it's production was limited to only that area.This, in turn made wine about 10 times more expensive than beer. -
4300 BCE
Beer Becomes A Foundation For Civilization
The nomadic peoples around the fertile crescent slowly start to settle down into permanent settlements and give up their hunter-gatherer lifestyle in favor of a farming one. The Egyptians would also quickly follow suit. A large influencer of this change was beer. Beer encouraged the people to settle down and deliberately farm grains. -
3400 BCE
Cuneiform Is Created
Cuneiform was created in Sumer when the need to keep written records arose. People found it easier to imprint special signatures onto wet clay than to hand out tokens. City officials had to keep record that a citizen paid their taxes in the form of beer and grains. The Egyptians also had a system of writing but whether it was based on Cuneiform or not remains unclear. -
2650 BCE
Usage Of Beer In Religious Ceremonies
Beer was often used in religious ceremonies in Egypt and Mesopotamia. The peoples thought that god had gifted them beer and taught them how to create it. During weddings people were expected to pay a "bride price" which often included beer. Even during funerals, the peoples were buried with jugs in their graves. -
2500 BCE
Beer Is Used As a Form of Currency
Beer and other various grains are used in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt as means to pay taxes. These would be labeled as a "gift to the gods" but in reality the temples would redistribute them and use them to fund various public works and feed their workforce. -
2100 BCE
Beer Is Used In Medicine
Beer is first used in medicine by the Sumerians around 2100 BCE who had varieties of medicines based on beer. The Egyptians around 1550 BCE also used beer in their medicine as herbal remedies. -
600 BCE
Vineyards Become A Way To Measure Your Power
The more vineyard holdings one had, the more power the individual had within Greece. This was shown when Athens and Sparta fought, vineyards were often the prime target. -
500 BCE
Wine Becomes A Major Export
By 500BCE Greek wine becomes a major export to different parts of the world including France and Egypt. This would lead to cultural diffusion and the knowledge of winemaking throughout the world. -
146 BCE
Wine Becomes A Staple Of Roman Culture
After the Roman's becomes the dominant power in the Mediterranean, they adopt many things from Greek culture including the civility of wine. Many things from Greek culture are stolen by Rome and used as their own such as wine making knowledge. -
100 BCE
Tea Is First Produced
Tea is created when the leaves, buds, and flowers of an evergreen bush, more specifically, Camellia sinensis are infused to create a drink. It most likely was first produced in the 1st century BCE although Chinese tradition states it goes all the way back to their 2nd emperor. -
455
Wine Loses It's Popularity To Beer After The Fall Of Rome
Rome fell to Germanic tribes at the time when the empire was weak. This leads to the Roman empire being separated into multiple smaller kingdoms. These tribes largely preferred beer instead of wine so wine quickly fell out of favor. -
Period: 618 to 907
The Tang Dynasty
The Tang dynasty is widely regarded as a golden age in the history of China. Tea would become so popular that it would become the national beverage. Trade flourished on the silk road and by sea, connecting China to many countries around the world including India, Japan, and Korea. The population of China would also triple at this time. -
632
Muslims Are Barred From Drinking Wine
Muslims are banned from drinking wine after their god Allah says that the indulgence of wine and gambling are "abominations devised by Satan". Although it was illegal, wine production still continued. This shifted the power from the Mediterranean to the Arabs. -
970
Spirits Are First Produced
Cordoba, the capital of the Arab Andalusia was a center for learning in the ancient world and also where a lot of concepts and inventions were developed. One of these was the distillation. Through the process alcoholic drinks could be made even more potent which were know as spirits. -
1300
The Mongol Empire
Tea would fall out of favor when the Mongolians took control of China. Under the rule of Genghis Khan and his sons, they would amass a huge empire which included much of Europe and Asia. They would manage accomplish this feat with better military strategies. The Mongol empire did not last very long however, and the Mongols would be kicked out of China and the Ming dynasty would start. -
1500
Spirits Are Used In The Slave Trade
When the growing need for manpower on sugar plantations reached its peak,countries from Europe (British, French, Dutch, Portuguese) relied on slavery to get the job done. At first slaves were kidnapped, but when the need grew even more, they began to buy slaves in bulk from Africa often with large amounts of spirits. -
1543
The Scientific Revolution
The Scientific Revolution was the was a period of time where people started to place a larger emphasis on the math and the sciences. Much of this thinking was done in coffeehouses and many revelations happened while in coffeehouse discussions as with the book "Philosophiae naturalis prncipia mathematica" by Isaac Newton. The trigger for this book was from Hooke in a coffeehouse in Oxford while Newton wrote the book in Cambridge. -
Coffee Is First Produced
Coffee originates from Yemen from their coffee berries. Coffee berries were chewed before the creation of coffee for energy. The person credited for making coffee berries into a drink would be the Yemeni scholar, Muhammad al-Dhabhani. -
Coffeehouses Become A Way To Spread Information
Coffeehouses, in the 17th century would become local centers for current news, gossip, and business. These coffeehouses were a lot like our internet today, as some of the news may be biased or unreliable. People would conduct business and catch up on the hottest gossip in these coffee shops. This was especially true in London and other various places in Europe. -
Pilgrims Settle In The New World
In 1607, permanent settlers from England arrived in the Americas for the first time. The colonists hoped that they would be able to grow many of the crops that were present in the Mediterranean. That was not the case however, because the climate was vastly different. Within these colonies, drinks were scarce and rum quickly became the drink of choice of the pilgrims as it was stronger and it was more available -
The British East India Company
The British East India Company in the 1660's were granted a lot of influence in England and the East Indies through a series of small tributes of tea to Charles II. They had the power to gain land, issue currency, and other powers. They had a monopoly on the imports from the East Indies to England. -
Jonathan's, The Forerunner For The London Stock Exchange
When the government imposed stricter rulers on the Royal Exchange, many felt this was unfair and deviated from the Exchange. The stockbrokers moved into the surrounding coffeehouses most notably of which was Jonathan's. When Jonathan's was forced to let in everybody due to it being a public place, some brokers broke away from Jonathan's and started an establishment which with time became the London Stock Exchange which is used by many countries today. -
Arabia Becomes The World's Leading Supplier Of Coffee
Arabia was the world's largest supplier of coffee up until the end of the 16th century. This would lead to other foreign powers trying to take over this trade. The Arabs, understandingly tried to protect their monopoly in various ways. Multiple countries would break into this monopoly but ultimately, Brazil would become the world's largest supplier in the end. -
The Widespread Defiance Of The Molasses Act
The Molasses Act was an attempt by the Britain to halt New England from buying molasses which was instrumental for the rum industry from the French by taxing the buying of molasses from foreign places. This act was largely ignored by New England and smugglers brought in French molasses as it was considered superior. -
The Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution happened due to a new invention, the spinning wheel. The first modern factory was built on a river in 1768 . This would give the British a whole new approach on manufacturing and directly led to Britain becoming the first industrialized nation. The textiles produced by these factories were so easily made and cheap that when they were exported to India, it completely annihilated the traditional weaving trade. In these new factories, tea was often the drink of choice. -
The French And Indian War
The French and Indian War was a war fought between Britain and its colonies vs France and its colonies. The British and the colonists would end up victorious. This would leave Britain with a huge debt. The British taxed the colonists even more, their reasoning being that the war was fought in their behalf. One of these changes was that the tax on molasses, which is crucial in the making of rum was actually enforced. These taxes were very unpopular with the American peoples. -
Coca-Cola Is First Produced
Coca-Cola was first used for medicinal purposes. Joseph Priestly, an English clergyman and scientist first came up with the process to carbonate water. Coca Cola was created by a pharmacist named John Pemberton. He used coca in a patent drug he was creating and created Coca-Cola. -
The Tea Act
The Tea Act was passed by the British government to bail the British East India Company out of their humongous debt and it also gave them the right to ship tea from China to America. That made it so that they would not have to pay the British tax in exchange for the much cheaper American tax. The Tea Act was resented in New England, as the Americans just wanted to trade without interference from the British government. This would lead to the Boston Tea Party, where 342 crates of tea were dumped. -
The Revolutionary War
Although tea is widely regarded as what sparked the Revolutionary War, rum played just as much of a role the years before. The "taxation without representation" of the colonists made them despise their rulers in England. During the war rum was considered a necessity and was often the soldier's drink of choice. The colonists won the war and became free from British rule. -
The French Revolution
The French Revolution sparked to life in a coffeehouse called Cafe de Foy. A man named Camille Desmoulins set the Revolution in motion with a speech in said coffeehouse. The civilians of France revolted against the French king after the firing of a trusted French official and the army being called out following a meeting gone wrong. The citizens would storm Bastille and overthrow the monarchy -
Attack On Pearl Harbor
The U.S would enter the World War II following the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese. America's involvement in the war would be pivotal to the outcome of the war. The Coca Cola company even offered every soldier 5 cents for every coke no matter the cost to the company. To end the war, the American's dropped 2 nuclear bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. -
The Cold War
The Cold War was a war fought between NATO and the Warsaw Treaty Organization.These two organizations fought for influence and control. The Russians wanted communism to spread to the war ravaged countries as a way to solve their problems whilst NATO wanted to push democracy. There was never any actual physical conflict between the two. Coca Cola became a symbol. It symbolized what was good with democracy to the American's and what was bad about democracy to the Soviets. -
The Marshall Plan
The Marshall Plan was the American effort to help war torn Europe recover from WWII. Coca Cola to the communists represented America. It represented what they hated, capitalism. They also felt it represented American imperialism (Coca Colonization) as they were trying to spread it's influence to Europe. -
The Vietnam War
The Vietnam War happened because the American's wanted to protect South Vietnam from communism. After the northern part of Vietnam fell to communism the Viet Cong wanted to spread it to the southern part. The American's wanted to hinder communism's progress through Eurasia so they went to war with Vietnam. The Coca Cola company wanted to expand behind the Iron Curtain but they were prevented from doing so due to public backlash as they would be doing business with the communists. -
The Iraq War
The Iraq War was an American led invasion of the Iraq to throw the dictator Saddam Hussein. Coca Cola protests by the Muslims at the time were popular as they symbolized everything they hated about the American's. Even when the soldier's occupied Saddam Hussein's palace, they had a BBQ with Coca Cola. The war would end with a stalemate.