Patrick Mcgovern with a Goblet of Liquid History. Facing Page
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MAN, T Patrick McGovern with a goblet of liquid history. Facing page: The oldest vessel known to have contained grape wine, from Hajji Firuz, Iran 34 JAN | FEB 2010 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE circa 5400 B.C. Fermentation would have set it rocking with mysterious tremors. The Drinker Biomolecular archaeologist and Penn Museum researcher Patrick McGovern Gr’80 has found some of the oldest alcoholic beverages known to history, and he wants you to take a glug. They might just be responsible for civilization as we know it. (Not to mention your next hangover.) By Trey Popp THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE JAN | FEB 2010 35 photography by candace dicarlo THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE JAN | FEB 2010 35 scrum around Sam Calagione’s McGovern, a senior research scientist 700 B.C., has won more awards than any- The keg measured 10 deep, and at the Penn Museum, has spent the last thing else Dogfish Head makes. everyone was angling for a cup laced with two decades on the trail of ancient wines Tonight’s quaff, though, promised to the brewer’s saliva. It was not a secret and beers. Scraping the gunk out of old make its predecessors look tame. It was a ingredient. The drinkers had just heard all cauldrons and pottery sherds, he has South American-style beer called chicha about it in the Penn Museum’s Upper found evidence of alcoholic beverages as made with the help of Clark Erickson, Egyptian Gallery. They’d seen slides. But far apart in space and time as Iron Age associate curator of the Museum’s for fans of extreme fermentation, this was Turkey and Neolithic China. Some of his American section. To transform its base the highlight of the night: the final few discoveries have been surprising. Some of purple Peruvian corn into a mash ame- liters of a very limited edition inspired by have been bizarre. Using tools like mass nable to yeast fermentation, the men had a theory of the invention of beer itself. spectrometry and liquid chromatogra- chewed every last kernel and spit the Calagione is the founder of Delaware’s phy, McGovern has deciphered, with cuds into the brewing kettle. Dogfish Head Brewery. A trim and tanned unprecedented exactitude, the ingredi- “We think that chewing is probably the 40-year-old with the jaw line of a Gillette ents of fermented beverages brewed as earliest way that humans would have trans- model and a ready laugh, he doesn’t seem far back as 9,000 years ago. formed starch into sugar” in order to get like someone who would spit in your Calagione has helped him put some of fermentation going, McGovern explained drink. But then neither does Patrick that evidence to a literal taste-test. Together in his lecture. Modern beer relies on the McGovern Gr’80, who had provided the they have reverse-engineered four archaic enzymes released by sprouted and malt- scholarly justification for it. The mild- grogs. Each started out as an academic ed barley to get this job done, but malting mannered archaeologist is a picture of exercise, but the project has taken on a barley can be a little tricky. Our saliva harmlessness. His flaring white beard and commercial life of its own. Two have won contains an enzyme called ptyalin that snowdrift of hair make him look like a medals at the Great American Beer Festival does the same thing. “It may not sound man poking his spectacles through a pile in Denver, Colorado. One, a mixed wine/ very appetizing to think of people prepar- of wool. Yet there was no getting around it. beer/mead concoction reconstructed from ing their beverages this way, but once you This brew contained “six or seven hours’ McGovern’s analysis of a drinking set bur- get an alcoholic beverage, it does kill off worth” of his own saliva as well. ied with the legendary King Midas circa any harmful bacteria.” From Drunken Monkeys to Medicine Men: A Brief History of Tipsiness To understand the modern fascination with alco- Beyond the physiological imperative, the uni- holic beverages of all kinds, as well as the reasons versality of fermented beverages in human soci- why they are also targets of condemnation, we eties cries out for even farther-reaching explana- need to step back and take a longer view. Alcohol tions. Certainly, the natural occurrence of fer- occurs in nature, from the depths of space to the mentation, one of the key processes that humans primordial “soup” that may have generated the harnessed during their Neolithic revolutions, first life on Earth. Of all known naturally addictive provides part of the answer. Fermentation con- substances, only alcohol is consumed by all fruit- tributes nutrients, flavors, and aromas to food eating animals. It forms part of an intricate web of and drink—whether a lambic beer, Champagne, interrelationships between yeasts, plants, and ani- cheese, or tofu. It removes potentially harmful mals as diverse as the fruit fly, elephant, and alkaloids, helps to preserve them because alco- human, for their mutual benefit and propagation. hol kills spoilage microorganisms, and decreases According to the “drunken monkey hypothesis,” food-preparation time and hence fuel needs by most primates are physiologically “driven to breaking down complex constituents. drink,” and humans, with bodies and metabolisms Excerpt Moreover, alcoholic beverages within human adapted to the consumption of alcohol, are no cultures effectively transcend the natural pro- exception. Like water, a fermented beverage cess of fermentation. They have a long and wide- refreshes and fills us up, but it does much more. Apart from the spread history as superb social lubricators. The great monu- peoples in the Arctic and those at the southern tip of South ments of the human civilization—for example, the Egyptian America in Tierra del Fuego—dwelling in climates too harsh to pyramids and the Incan royal centers and irrigation works— support any sugar-rich plants—almost every known culture has were built by rewarding the workers with vast quantities of produced its own alcoholic beverage. Signs of indigenous fer- alcoholic refreshment. Today, fund-raising and political suc- mented drinks are also so far noticeably absent from Australia, cess can hardly be imagined without a liberal supply of drink. perhaps owing to limited excavation there. The use of the hallu- On any night in any part of the world you will find people cinogen pituri by Aborigines may be a later substitution for gathered in bars, pubs, and drinking halls, conversing anima- alcohol, as tobacco might have been for native North Americans. tedly and relieving the stresses of the day. 36 JAN | FEB 2010 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE He paused for a beat. “And it might add from McGovern’s biomolecular assays, tory as resurrecting the full breadth of it. some special flavors, too. You never know.” though, have a special significance for McGovern has his own reason to rel- Well, not until you slug it down, anyway. Calagione. To fans and critics alike, his ish bringing tastes of the deep past to Compared to the saffron-kissed honey of brewery has a way of coming off like a present-day tongues. He thinks our Dogfish Head’s Midas Touch, or the chili- high-school hooligan who’ll rip up any fondness for alcoholic beverages has tinged chocolate notes of its Maya- and page with a rule printed on it. But work- been a profound force in human histo- Aztec-inspired Theobroma, the special fla- ing with “Doctor Pat,” as the brewer refers ry. One of archaeology’s most fascinat- vors in the spit-primed Chicha ran more to his professorial partner, has strength- ing unsettled questions concerns which toward funky pink peppercorns with a ened Calagione’s conviction that Dogfish foodstuff was more consequential in hint of fraternity basement. But this par- Head isn’t so much trampling on beer his- civilization’s early stages: bread or ticular vintage was an unlikely candidate beer? With each ancient grog he has for large-scale production to begin with. uncovered—particularly a 9,000-year- It would wear out too many jaws. For old specimen from China’s Yellow River Calagione, a limited run ending at the Valley, which represents the earliest Museum—which got the last remaining known alcoholic beverage—McGovern keg—was part of the fun. “When we has added evidence to the tipplers’ side opened in 1995,” he told the tasting of the ledger. He believes the quest for crowd, “our goal was to brew the antith- fermented beverages was mankind’s esis of what dominated the commercial primary motivation for domesticating brewing landscape then and now.” grain-bearing plants. It isn’t his only That contrarian ethos practically leaps conjecture. Once he gets rolling—even out of every bottle Dogfish Head caps, without the aid of one of his and corks, or seals with a plastic screwtop (as Calagione’s left-field libations—McGov- in its semi-ironic 40-ounce Liquor De ern can make alcohol seem like the Malt, which came with a hand-stamped master key that you can’t understand brown paper bag). The ones stemming human culture without. Bronze Age mixing bowl wine set from Tell es-Sa’idiyeh in the Jordan Valley, circa 1200 B.C. Before modern medicines, alcoholic beverages were the univer- ture? Around the world, the available archaeological, chemi- sal palliative. The pharmacopeias of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, cal, and botanical evidence attests to the close association China, Greece, and Rome depended on fermented beverages for between alcoholic beverages and religion. Except where treating every kind of ailment. They were also used as vehicles alcohol has been proscribed or access to the divine has been for dissolving and dispensing medicinal herbs, resins, and achieved in other ways (e.g., through meditation, as in spices.