Pub Crawl

[Boreades]

Re "how do they know this was a 'Celtic Temple'? "
Umm, I'll have to go back and ask to be sure, but I think Bryn Walters told me there were pre-Roman items. Should I just call it "pagan" to be on the safe side?

[hvered]

It would be interesting to know how they decide a building is a temple.

Our nearest big Roman site is Silchester where a structure has been dubbed a temple because it's circular, there being no other distinctive features. Hmm, are circular structures by definition sacred? I wonder what future archaeologists will make of oast houses.

[TelMiles]

Just watched an old Time Team on the telly and the head archie, Mick Aston, said that EVERYONE in medieval Britain drank beer as water was too dirty. He said even kids had their own beer and that the adult beer was something like ten times as powerful as modern beer.

I just can't see everyone drinking beer all the time. I don't doubt they did drink it, but all the time is a bit of a stretch. Means everyone was pissed most of the time. Also, they knew they had to boil water to get the impurities out, why not then just drink it when it cooled? They also filtered water from streams with stones...

[Jools]

I just can't see everyone drinking beer all the time. I don't doubt they did drink it, but all the time is a bit of a stretch.

It's important to remember that beer is food as well as drink.

Also I think we should be careful about claiming that water was too dirty to drink. Wells were carefully tended, some were even 'holy' i.e. clean.

[Malmaison]

Alcohol is a good source of calories. This is probably why so much alcohol is drunk in cold climates. Apart of course from northern countries having less fertile land than southern ones.

[Penny]

But doesn't the richness and availability of the Arctic food larder supply all the calories you need? It's true that fruit and veg grow in relatively warm conditions but we're told that humans require a diet high in protein, of which meat and fish are excellent sources. (We keep hearing that fish eating cultures as in Japan and Iceland are healthier than anyone else's).

[Jools]

Alcohol is a good source of calories. This is probably why so much alcohol is drunk in cold climates. Apart of course from northern countries having less fertile land than southern ones.

Alcohol has such an ancient history (does anyone know how far back it goes?) that it appears to be coeval with the very beginnings of agriculture. Its origins are attributed to the Middle East which suits archaeologists who attribute civilization generally and agriculture in particular to this region.

Even whisky which is practically in the DNA of 'northern countries' is said to come from elsewhere, from Arabia of all places

Its basic roots are probably not in Scotland , but in the middle east where Arab alchemists in the 10th Century discovered how to distil alcohol while making cosmetics and perfume by distilling flowers. Indeed the word alcohol is derived from the Arabic, Al kuhul, or eye makeup. The word Kohl is still used for this today. As Muslims, the Arabs had no use for alcohol as a drink but the Moors brought the technique to Spain from whence it spread throughout Europe.

Alcohol may in fact refer to the technque, to the pressing, that produced the liquor. Printing, another world-wide phenomenon, is said to have evolved from wine presses, or oil presses.

[Jools]

Arab merchants travelled long distance routes. Alcohol which is an excellent preservative may have been needed for uses other than drinking. Hence tags like 'the water of life' that are applied to several spirits don't necessarily mean human life.

[spiral]

Alcohol is like alchemy. Magic and Purity.

[hvered]

Alchemy is supposed to have been derived from al kemy ("from egypt"), but it seems quite a broad term. Al-Khemia meaning 'black land' may be a reference to the fertile flood plain in Egypt since the Egyptians called their land 'Khem' which isn't so far removed from home/ ham, etc. 'Al' is an Arabic word though in several European languages el, il, le, meaning he or the.

The English words alcohol, alchemy, alum all have a connection with fire, burning off impurities.