The 24 hour party poopers

Despite fears that the United Kingdom would become engulfed by 24-hour binge drinking, new licensing laws came into being recently – with very little trouble.

The British media predicted city streets awash with regurgitated alcohol and legless abusive drunks, but the police authorities reported tthat he introduction of 24-hour drinking laws passed smoothly.

Binge drinking, trashing the bar and jeering at the neighbours may indeed be a feature of contemporary Britain – the so called Faliraki drinking culture - but it was also the kind of boorish behaviour enjoyed 1,000 years ago in South America.

Archaeologists discovered the site of an ancient brewery on the top of a mountain in Peru that was used by drunken revellers in full view of people from a neighbouring empire.

The site, believed to be one of the oldest breweries in the world, was discovered by researchers from the Field Museum in Chicago at Cerro Baul in the mountains of southern Peru, a centre for the pre-Inca Wari empire.

It is believed to have been used to brew vast quantities of a spicy, beerlike alcoholic drink called ‘chicha’ and served to hundreds at one sitting in purpose-built drinking halls.

It is thought that the fermented drink, made today with corn, was used for a special intoxication ritual by the Wari people.

Chicha was so important to the Wari that it was brewed by a group of select, high-status women. Archaeologists were able to conclude this from the large number of shawl pins found in the thr.....

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By Dominic Roskrow

Section : Beer Matters

Page number : 56