yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

Alcohol 101 | National Geographic


2m read
·Nov 11, 2024

[Music] Alcohol has been a component of human culture for thousands of years. From its prehistoric inception to its many uses in modern times, alcohol has had countless effects on our cultures and our lives. Throughout the course of human history, alcoholic beverages have taken on many forms and flavors around the world.

The earliest known alcoholic beverage dates back to about 9,000 years ago in northern China. It was a kind of wine made from fruit, honey, and rice. About a thousand years later, in the Central Asian country of Georgia, the oldest wine made exclusively from grapes was produced. Around the same time, in the Middle East, the earliest beer was being made from barley.

No matter where or what types of alcoholic beverages are produced, they all share a similar chemistry. The type of alcohol found in beverages such as beer, wine, and spirits is called ethyl alcohol or ethanol. Ethanol is produced through fermentation, a process in which microorganisms, usually bacteria or a fungus called yeast, cause organic material to decompose. By decomposing, sugars in the organic material are converted into carbon dioxide and ethanol, the ingredient that makes alcoholic beverages intoxicating.

Alcohol's intoxicating effects are due to its role on the human central nervous system. Moderate amounts of alcohol trigger the release of neural chemicals such as dopamine, serotonin, and endorphins in the brain. This decreases anxiety, increases happiness, and depresses the brain's inhibitory activities. Apart from alcohol's mind-altering effects, it has been credited for several aspects of human culture.

[Music] Fermented beverages in ancient China may have served as a way to communicate with gods and deceased ancestors at funerary ceremonies. Right? Wine, similar to those discovered in prehistoric Georgia, is now a component of the Christian ritual, the Eucharist. In the Middle East, the home of the earliest evidence of beer, the earliest form of writing was also discovered. This form of writing is thought to have developed as a way to account for the production of crops, including barley for beer. Through moderate consumption, alcohol may continue to contribute to countless other aspects of human culture.

You [Music]

More Articles

View All
How to Start Investing in Stocks in 2021? (w/ @Value-Investing)
Hey guys, welcome back to the channel! In this video, I’m super excited. I got to do a sit down, kind of quick 20-minute interview with Sven Carlin. Of course, you guys all know Sven from over on his YouTube channel. The topic of this conversation was how…
TIL: You Can Smell Through Your Skin | Today I Learned
[Music] Your nose isn’t the only thing that can smell things. You can smell through your skin, and that was a big surprise on one of our expeditions. I dive into a lot of these underwater caves, what we call blue holes. Maybe at about 30 ft, you hit these…
2017 AP Calculus AB/BC 4c | AP Calculus AB solved exams | AP Calculus AB | Khan Academy
Let’s now tackle part C, which tells us that for T is less than 10, an alternate model for the internal temperature of the potato at time T minutes is the function G that satisfies the differential equation: The derivative of G with respect to T is equal…
New Discovery: Blood-Red Worms That Thrive in a Toxic Cave (EXCLUSIVE VIDEO) | National Geographic
These worms are small. They’re red, blood red, and they occur in well knots of worms—lots of worms together. Finding the worms in a place like sulfur cave shows that there are even places on Earth where creatures can live, where they are not connected to …
The elements of a poem | Reading | Khan Academy
Hello readers! Let’s talk about poems. Poetry is a special kind of writing. If ordinary writing is like talking, then poetry is like singing. Poetry is a way of making art with language. Poems can express huge ideas or feelings. They can be about the soun…
STOP SAVING MONEY | The Warning Of Hyper Inflation
What’s up? Grandma’s guys here. So, there’s no easy way to say this, but let’s just rip off the Band-Aid. Yes, it’s true, I’ve worn the same shirt now for the last few days so I wouldn’t have to do laundry. Oh, and yeah, inflation is spiraling out of cont…