If corn and potatoes are from the Americas, why weren’t Native Americans making whiskey and vodka before the Europeans showed up?

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If corn and potatoes are from the Americas, why weren’t Native Americans making whiskey and vodka before the Europeans showed up?

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19 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Whisky is typically made from barley which the Native Americans didn’t have, vodka is typically made from wheat or rye, not potatoes, which they also didn’t have. The Native Americans did make their own alcoholic drinks from their own sources of sugars but there’s very limited evidence for distillation and it certainly wasn’t widespread. There was also less water bourne disease in Pre-Colombian America and therefore less need to make alcoholic drinks.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Because before the settlers came they were perfectly happy and satisfied and didn’t require it.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Azteks were wery yang civilisation. They just strated tech progress when they were anihilated.

Destilation by itself is quite depending process. If you make it wrong instead of spirit you would get blinding poison.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Because they made alcohol by fermenting fruits, roots, and starchy seeds from wild and domesticated plants. The question also points to the fact that, when we think of inventions, it’s viewed through the eyes of Europeans as the center.

Anonymous 0 Comments

because they had no real ability to metalwork. you have to distill a mash to make spirits and pre European colonists the natives basically just had stone age technology

Anonymous 0 Comments

Distillation is a random discovery, that they didn’t make. Similarly, malting (letting grains sprout and toasting them to stop growth and preserve the diastases) and mashing (heating at temps that encourage starch breakdown without damaging the enzymes) are random discoveries.

Some pre-Columbian civilizations knew to use amylase from saliva to break down starches for fermentation, but there’s no way to know if that was a discovery or already common technology when the Americas were settled.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Native Americans didn’t have fire until Europeans showed up, so they couldn’t heat their stills

Anonymous 0 Comments

Because New World societies had remarkably little technological development in certain areas like food production and metallurgy. The extent to which thus was caused by relatively low population density vs low population density being a product of it is extensively debated and studied. Many North American civilizations did not even have a system of writing, which is one of the reasons we know so little about their history. It was mostly oral tradition that was lost when post Columbian contact annihilated their numbers.

It is weird to comprehend societies that could chart the stars and calculate eclipses, but could barely farm beyond the most basic neolithic practices (except for the Inca’s, who at least practiced terracing), but history is stranger than fiction. You can’t make it up and make it sound believable.

Anonymous 0 Comments

they had such a good life they did not need to be pissed off their faces to survive the day to day grind