Speakers
8th European Beer and Health Symposium
Andrew Curry
Journalist
Andrew Curry is a freelance journalist based in Berlin, Germany. He covers science, history, culture, and politics for a wide variety of publications, including Archaeology, National Geographic, Nature, Science and Wired. His work has been included in “The Best American Science and Nature Writing” anthologies and awarded prizes by the German Foreign Ministry. A graduate of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, he earned a master’s degree in Russian and East European Studies from Stanford University. He worked at US News and World Report and Smithsonian before moving to Germany in 2005 as a Fulbright Journalism Fellow.
Beer on Our Minds: The Alcohol, Brewing and the Roots of Civilization
The compulsion to ferment has challenged human creativity for millennia. Evidence for alcohol production has been found in Stone Age China, Bronze Age Israel, on bone-dry Peruvian mountaintops and prehistoric settlements on the slopes of the Caucasus. Beer quenched the thirst of the workers who built the pyramids. Researchers have demonstrated that booze – whether in the form of beer, wine, mead, spirits or a mixture — is one of the most universally-produced and enjoyed substances on Earth.
From the parties of today to the rituals of the Paleolithic, alcohol’s there’s strong evidence that mind-altering properties facilitate our ability to think symbolically, make music and develop spirituality — and that beer and other alcoholic beverages nourished the roots of the earliest civilizations.