{"id":21422,"date":"2018-09-15T11:44:07","date_gmt":"2018-09-15T15:44:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/?p=21422"},"modified":"2018-09-15T14:40:51","modified_gmt":"2018-09-15T18:40:51","slug":"why-women-invented-beer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/2018\/09\/15\/why-women-invented-beer\/","title":{"rendered":"Why women invented beer"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Ninkasi, Sumerian goddess of beer.<\/p><\/div>\n

Yesterday an article in the Food and Drink section of Huffington Post caught my eye: “According To History, We Can Thank Women For Beer<\/a>.” It details the role of women in the invention and development of brewing going back at least 9,000 years. But it never answers the question that immediately arose in my mind – “Why\u00a0<\/em>did women invent beer?” Here’s my theory.<\/p>\n

\n

Why Women Invented Beer<\/h3>\n

In those days the hunters had to range so far to find
\na mammoth the whole clan would have to come,
\nleaving behind the sheltered valley rich with berries
\nand nuts, the river teeming with fish and mussels –
\nout to where there was nothing but wind and moss,
\nsnow blown sideways across the endless steppes.<\/p>\n

Then a year came when there were no mammoths,
\nnot a track, no dung, nothing. The men pogoed
\nfor hours around the fire, chanting their hunt songs;
\nthe shaman babbled, wailed, shook the magic rattle –
\nall to no avail. And so, half-starved, footsore, the band
\ndragged themselves back to their bend in the river.<\/p>\n

That lean year the clan ate anything they could find:
\nroots, bugs, even the grasses the wild horses grazed.
\nBeing barely edible as was, a woman boiled it, added
\na little wild honey so the children would eat it too,
\nand set it aside for later. But she forgot about it
\nand the batch went bad, bubbling and stinking.<\/p>\n

So when himself came back grumpy, hungry, with
\nhis game pouch empty, she said “Well, there’s this;
\nit’s nasty, but it will fill the hole in you.” Having eaten
\nworse – raw snails, rotted fish – he choked it down.
\nLater he began to laugh at nothing in particular
\nand rolled around with the children in the dirt.<\/p>\n

This being so unlike him, she made another batch,
\ngathering all the seed-heads she could find.
\nHe shared the brew with his hunting brothers,
\nwho spent the whole night hooting around the fire,
\ndancing and showing off. When morning broke
\nnone of them felt much inclined to take up the hunt.<\/p>\n

And so settled life began, and agriculture. The men
\nbegan to build fences and walls and huts. Women
\nplanted, harvested and brewed, and the place beside
\nthe river became civilization. The Sumerians knew
\nher as Ninkasi, goddess of beer. In ancient Egypt,
\nshe was revered as Menqet. And the rest is history.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday an article in the Food and Drink section of Huffington Post caught my eye: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[6128,14],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21422"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21422"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21422\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21430,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21422\/revisions\/21430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}