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
Basically, while the nature of microbes (germs) and their composition, size, etc. were unknown, ancient people were pretty good about understanding their effects.
For example, several ancient religions/cultures forbid handling of dead bodies and eating pork; the ancient people wouldn’t have known about dangerous bacteria in rotting flesh or transmissible parasites in pigs, but they probably noticed a lot of people get sick/die after handling dead bodies of eating bad pork.
The Mongols believed that boiling water would drive our evil spirits and make it safe; replace ‘evil spirits’ with ‘disease causing pathogens’ and it’s pretty solid.
So, while ancient people didn’t know the chemical composition or processes of brewery yeast or alcohol, they knew water + sugar source + bread stuff = fire water. These ingredients would’ve been pretty close together, and alcohol even forms naturally on occasion. The fact that alcoholic drinks wouldn’t cause people to get the runs incentivized them to make it
Extra credits channel on yt just did a series on history of beer and touches on that [subject](https://youtu.be/KJsWaJVtZWA). Like all things food related discoveries: coincidence and it didn’t kill them.
How exactly is a rainbow made? How exactly does a sun set? How exactly does a posi-trac rear end on a Plymouth work? It just does.
they thought it was something certain material did spontaneously. which, without sterilization, is close enough to true. yeast exists naturally on nearly all food.
Stuff just works.
Kinda like gravity and the big orange thing in the sky.
“Hows positrac work, how are rainbows made? It just does…. (Joe Dirt)”
So there is a difference between doing something and understanding what you are doing.
Germ theory is new – it is an understanding that germs exist, and beyond that the whole understanding of microscopic life and the role they play in things like fermentation.
Before that, all these things like wine, ale, yoghurt etc came about through trial and error, and passing on that knowledge to the next generation.
Cheese is a good example – one theory is someone in ancient times tried to store milk within a container made out of an animal stomach; this accidentally exposed the milk to the enzymes in the stomach and separated the milk into curds and whey. This is one method of making curds. Tasting the curds you’d realise it’s something new; the next step is separating out the solid curds from the liquid whey to make your cheese. There are over 1000 different cheeses as there are so many different ways of both making curds and what you can do with curds afterwards, and so many different milks to use. All of this is from trial and error, with totally different methods and so different cheeses from all over the world. But the first step is thought to have happened in 5,000 BC and spread from there.
But the science of cheese – actually understanding how curds form or the other steps that go into making cheese work – is modern. Until then it was simply – if you do this, you will get this cheese.
This applies to wine, ale, yoghurt and so on. Some are easier to understand how they might be accidentally discovered – making wine by accidentally leaving grapes to ferment for example. Others are a bit more mind boggling – yoghurt is made by heating then cooling then culturing. However each step still produces something useful that may have allowed the next step, which may explain how complex processes for some yoghurts came about. For yogurt, the first step is called scalding – scalded milk is used directly in some recipes, scalded then cooled milk is used to make some breads and so on.
So while it seems impossible to do these things without understanding how it works, a lot of these things have been around for 1000s of a years and likely came about by accidents, and people trying new things and sharing those new recipes and methods. Then once we developed microscopes we started to understand how these things actually work.
You don’t have to know how wheat grows to use flour and make bread… people follow processes that work without needing to know *how* it works at all.
Look at driving a car; the average person has little idea how an engine functions, and often not even if their own car is front- or rear-wheel drive. It just magically goes when you step on that pedal thingy.
They new about bacteria, fungus, etc. Germ theory describes why and how, not exactly what. Remember that they can see the yeast and such because of the size of colony. It happens more than once and these big collections of something are growing in it? It’s obviously connected even if they don’t truly have a good understanding of it.
When a culture develops agriculture it sets out on a path of inevitable discovery. You grow grains for bread, you store your grains and at some point they get wet and begin to sprout. You have discovered malt at which point God steps in and says,”Y’all though that ‘let there be light bit was good? Hah! Watch this! “Let there be beer!”
…and it was good.
Ancient people were mostly like “yeah, food just does that sometimes.” You cook an egg and it hardens, you chop up an apple and it turns brown, you let malted barley sit in a tun for a few days and it gets foamy and makes you tell your friends you love them. Why do these things happen? Dunno. God/s made it it that way, and we love them for it.
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