AP World Summer Assignment (Eliza Lockwood)

Beer

9000 BCE

People began to gather barley and wheat on purpose, instead of gathering wild grains for eating. The switch to farming was partly used to maintain the supply of beer since beer was much safer than water to drink.

Beer

8000 BCE

Making sure that everyone in the tribe was pulling their weight, the leaders made clay tokens, since beer was so important to the Egyptians and was drunken with every meal. Beer was so valuable that it was thought to have been sent from the gods.

Beer

8000 BCE

Mesopotamians believed that the eating of bread and the drinking of beer were what made them human and that beer was an ancient, God-given drink that had a social, religious, and cultural importance. Sharing a drink was a sign of hospitality and friendship. Many cultures would drink the beer through a straw.

Wine

5000 BCE

The earliest written evidence of wine was found and was being held in a pottery bowl that was storing the wine all the way back from 6000 BC. Back then, they believed that power is like wine and can intoxicate when consumed in large quantities by people who are not used to it.

Wine

3150 BCE

If you drank wine, you had a high status. When King Scorpion the first died, he was buried with 700 jars of wine. By then, domestic production was already underway. You needed a high social status to drink wine.

Beer

2350 BCE

Beer was the “bride price” from the groom’s family to the bride’s family for their marriage. Beer was also a form of payment to children and women for doing work at the temples. The standard payment for building pyramids was three to four loaves of bread and two jugs of beer.

Beer

2350 BCE

A form of writing in Egypt was created to record the collection and distribution of beer, grain, bread and other goods. Eventually, writings became much more abstract.

Wine

870 BCE

King Ashurbasirpal the 2nd of Assyria drank wine instead of drinking beer, even though he was of Mesopotamian heritage. This was such a high honor since only the elite could drink wine.

Wine

825 BCE

Wine drinking developed into an increasingly elaborate and formal social ritual. Soon wine began to become more accessible to the public when the production increased and the prices fell. France alone contained 250,000 liters of wine.

Wine

146 BCE

Rome became the world’s foremost wine producing region, even holding the greatest wine tasting in history. Soon there was a law passed on how much someone could spend on wine, food, and entertainment in any given month.

Tea

25

According to Chinese tradition, the first cup of tea was believed to be brewed by emperor Shen Nung, who reigned China from 2737BC - 2697BC. Though it was proved wrong according to the Neo-Han Dynasty.

Tea

618

Tea spread throughout China like wildfire and became the national beverage. At this time, China was the largest, most populated, and the wealthiest empire in the world.

Tea

780

Tea had a very visible economic impact on China that the value of China during trade increased. Eventually, during the Tang dynasty, they had the first tea tax.

Spirits

1386

Spirits were originally used as medicine and were used as a drink or poured over the affected part of the body. The new drinks started to emerge as European explorers were first opening up the sea routes.

Spirits

1386

When knowledge of distillation spread into Europe, so the people began drinking more distilled spirits. A French professor at Montpellier produced instructions for the distilling. When this information spread around the world, from the New World, all the way to the southern tip of Africa.

Spirits

1500

Slaves had turned Madeira into the largest exporter of sugar in the world. Drinking imported alcohol became a mark of distinction among African slaves. A traveler who visited Barbados in 1651 observed that the islanders preferred drink was distilled sugar cane. By 1655, rum became very popular among sailors even though the strength in it varied. During this time, there was no way of measuring the amount of alcohol in a drink.

Coffee

1500

Islam began to ban being intoxicated, so the people started drinking coffee. Coffee was made from using boiled water and provided a new and safe alternative to alcoholic drinks. Everyone began becoming sober and less blotting to reality.

Tea

1610

The first commercial consignment of tea was brought to Europe. A couple years after, people in Europe started to put milk in their tea.

Coffee

1666

There were 83 coffee houses in London, although many were burned down in the Great Fire of London, then more started to arise in their place. By the end of the century, there were 100s of them in London.

Coffee

Dec 29, 1675

The king “proclaimed a suppression of coffeehouses”, saying that the establishments were very evil and had dangerous effects and many attempts to close the coffeehouses were made.

Coffee

1730

The use of coffeehouses was very apparent in London. When businessmen wanted to hear about the news, all they had to do, was to walk into a coffee shop Coffeehouses became very popular during this time and are still popular to this day.

Spirits

1770

Rum was the drink of the colonial period and the American Revolution, but soon people started to turn away from rum. Many people started to turn to Whiskey. By 1771, there were over 5,000 pot stills in Pennsylvania alone.

Coffee

1772

Coffeehouses were a source of many different achievements. The Encyclopedia was completed in a coffeehouse and many scientific revelations were often discovered in a coffeehouse.

Tea

Dec 16, 1773

Americans dressed as Indians and stole 342 chests of tea and dumped into the Boston Harbor after the British placed a tax on tea. When the British found out, they had to close the Boston harbor until the East India company had gotten paid for the tea that got dumped into the harbor. This was one of the sparks that started the American Revolution.

Spirits

1786

The viceroy of Mexico suggested that the Indian fondness for whiskey should be applied with the Apaches to the north.

Coca-Cola

1798

Schweppe's was one of the first soda-water company's to produce artificial mineral waters to sell to the public in Europe. America was their best market since it was most popular there.

Coca-Cola

1886

Tuft's American Soda Foundation Company had over 100 patents and sold more than 20,000 machines. In the same month, the company tells people that John Pemberton had stumbled across the right combination of Coca-Cola while trying to find a cure for headaches, even though the true story is much more technical. On the 29th of the month, the first advertisement for Coca-Cola came out in the Atlantic Journal.

Coca-Cola

1898

At this time, soda was used as medicine for ill patients. Eventually, there was a tax placed on patent medication, and Coca-Cola had fallen under that category. Coca-Cola began to take the place of coffee as the main social drink and it was drunken by all ages at any time of day.

The United States

1900

The American economy overtook Britain's economy, by becoming the largest on earth. The U.S. stood as an unchallenged and the world's only superpower.

Coca-Cola

1911

Coca-Cola was put on trial, being blamed for its caffeine content for promoting sexual transgressions. A new competitor had risen, Pepsi and by 1962 Pepsi had risen to the top. In 1980, Coca-Cola became the official soft drink of the Olympics. Bottles of Coca-cola were shipped halfway across the world, where troops were stationed. By 1985, Coca-Cola had tried to produce a "New Coke", which was a major fail and sales dropped, forcing the company to go back to the original recipe.

Coca-Cola

1966

An Israel businessman had accused the Coca-Cola company of staying out of Isreal so that the company could protect the business in Arab. The company eventually responded and announced that they would license an Israeli bottling franchise. Two years later, when the Arab League found out about the deal, the Arab people began boycotting Coca-Cola because of the new deal.