If the germ theory is relatively new, how do they think fermentation was happening (like wine, ale, yogurt etc.) thousands of years ago?
In: 613
That shit just happened and it was cool as fuck. Berries ferment naturally and people figured that out probably by eating them, and started to replicate those conditions and perfect them over time. They began to see what variables changed the flavor and potency and the like. Relatively quickly the enjoyment of somewhat simple to produce very flavorful beverage spread and so more people started to have more ideas about how and what to do. The fact that it’s fermentation is a new idea and cool but doesn’t actually do much to the process overall
They just knew that brew begat brew, or they figured it was magic.
The Norse had a tradition where they would take a piece of wood and inoculate it with the yeast- sometimes a stick they would stir the brew with, sometimes an unworked log they would simply dump in it wholesale. The porous wood would take in living yeast from the brew, dry it safely, and store it for when it was dunked into the next brew.
They didn’t know anything about germs or yeast, they just knew the wood helped the brew.
A lot of medieval European cultures used beer wort to leaven bread. It’s easy enough to imagine this originating with someone doing this by accident trying to make a simple flatbread, substituting water for whatever leftover beer they had in the bottom of their pot.
Things can often simply ferment naturally. A fruit laying on the forest floor or a bees nest washed by the rain into a hollow stump have a decent, although not great, chance of being colonized primarily by yeast before anything else. If someone was desperate enough to eat or drink those things, they might put together that letting sweet things sit for long enough sometimes made you feel nice when you consumed them instead of making you sick.
Same as why people thought stuff that went up would then go down even though we hadn’t discovered gravity yet.
Stuff just did other stuff nd people didn’t look into it any further.
Yeast. It’s visible and interactive and recognizably alive. One does not need to understand cellular life to observe or farm yeast.
There’s the theory that someone wanted sweet water. So they put honey and water into a jar mixed it, took a few sips, closed the lid and put the stuff away for a few days / weeks. Then opened it again and drank from it again, unknowingly being the first person to drink alcohol. And mead at that.
Then they wanted more of the stuff, so they repeated the process. And then they experimented.
People probably knew about it in some capacity, but didn’t have the means to articulate it.
Thanks to modern science we now have this cultural drive to try to explain in rational terms everything that we observe. You see something curious and you automatically start to think how it could have happened. You make theories, you discuss with other people, you look for more information, etc.
But for a long time in history this mindset wasn’t the default. There were too many unexplained events happening and too little knowledge and tools to study them. There was also no urge to do it. Instead, it was more natural to accept things as they are and not ask questions that couldn’t be answered anyway. God knows best. Ancient philosophers and medieval alchemists were members of the higher layers of the society – they had time and resources to ponder those questions, but often they treated it as a hobby and were coming up with fantastic theories instead of something resembling science. Those who really tried were few and far between. So even though we know about people like Archimedes, Galen, or Avicenna, who were rigorous in their studies, their methods didn’t get popular recognition. That changed only fairly recently.
The WEST came up with the germ theory but do not think for a second that ancient cultures did not know about germs and cleanliness. There is lots of ancient literature discussing this. The West took a lot of time catching up and dying in the process….
Fortunately, some firsthand info exists- in particular, the [Hymn to Ninkasi](https://vinepair.com/articles/hymn-to-ninkasi-infographic/).
It’s both a hymn of praise to the Sumerian goddess of beer (also seduction, fertility, and warfare…so they had the full beer thing going on) and a bit of a recipe for how to make the stuff.
I could probably teach most random people how to set up a PCR experiment. I wouldn’t have to explain what is going on, they could just mix the ingredients, put it on the machine, etc.
Same concept.
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