Beverages as a Lens for Historical Analysis
The attempt to describe the history of the world through the drinks people consume seems to bean extremely interesting speculative lens for scientific research. The emergence and distribution of beverages can demonstrate the historical milestones of human civilization and trace important stages in the transmission of cultural experience. Moreover, modernity can be seen as a result of the spread of various aspects of human life, including the consumption of drinks.
Psychoactive Elements and Sanitation in Drink Evolution
An interesting perspective that deserves attention is that water, while at the heart of every drink, is not listed as essential in and of itself. This is because all six drinks mentioned by the author in the study contain one or another psychoactive element, alcohol or caffeine. On the one hand, this gives reason to assume that the key drinks in human history were made and widely distributed to stimulate or relax and intoxicate the mind. On the other hand, the spread of alcoholic beverages speaks, among other things, not about the prevalence of drunkenness throughout the history of civilization but about the need for water disinfection (Standage, 2005).
This perspective is fundamental for characterizing the history of human life since it emphasizes how a person learned self-preservation. Alcoholic drinks were thus a healthier substitute for intoxicated water and were safer. Drinks such as coffee were also prepared using heating at high temperatures, which was disinfected.
Cultural Exchange Through Drinks and Religion
Another interesting perspective worthy of the attention of the historian is the problem of drinks as a subject of cultural exchange. In particular, the interaction between cultures took place through wine and coffee, and the author points out that the Christian religion in some countries spread directly through the cult of wine. This drink has deep spiritual connotations that go back even to the history of ancient Greece with its cult of the idle god Dionysus, who left a mark on Western culture.
However, the book draws attention to the cultural exchange between representatives of the Christian and Arab denominations (Standage, 2005). Despite the fact that the origin of wine is Arabic culture, it was the Christians who adopted the tradition of drinking wine in connection with religious rituals (Standage, 2005). At the same time, the Arabs accepted the culture of coffee consumption as a healthy substitute for wine, which would not allow them to violate their spiritual concentration and religious discipline. Thus, drinks and religion turn out to be closely related, but not in a fixed form, but as a gradually emerging tradition with a fluctuating character.
Coca-Cola and the Globalization of Western Culture
Finally, the last culturally significant drink, the caffeinated Coca-Cola, should be mentioned. This drink has an up-to-date historical perspective on the influence of Western popular culture on the modern world. Coca-Cola, at the direction of the author, is directly associated with freedom of choice and democracy, a right for which it makes sense to fight.
In this way, the United States manifests itself as not only a force playing an important role in the world but also as an instrument of globalization that unites people (Marks, 2022). The creation of factories for the production of Coca-Cola caused a serious resonance in the communist countries, demonstrating indirect American expansion. This example shows the perspective of how an ideology, even if it is an ideology of freedom, can spread through brand recognition.
References
Marks, R. B. (2022). The origins of the modern world: A global and environmental narrative from the fifteenth to the twenty-first century. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Standage, T. (2005). A history of the world in 6 glasses. Walker Publishing Company.