According to Homer Simpson, beer is the cause of, and the听solution to, all of life鈥檚 problems. Some scientists one-up Homer and claim that .听

As any world-history student can tell you, the first civilizations emerged along the great river valleys of the world: the Tigris and Euphrates, the Ganges and Indus, the Yangtze and Yellow.

River valleys provided the fertile soils needed to grow the grains that听humans were busy domesticating.听The assumption had听long been that it was the pursuit of stable food supplies that drove us to forego our hunter-gatherer lifestyles and cultivate those grains along the rivers.听But some scientists now听say it wasn鈥檛 hunger, but thirst, that sparked civilization.听鈥淎 main motivation for settling down and domesticating crops was probably to make an alcoholic beverage of some kind,鈥� archeologist Patrick McGovern the Independent in 2010. 鈥淧eople wanted to be closer to their plants, so this leads to settlement.鈥澨�

Here鈥檚 how I听think it went down.

One day听approximately 7,000 years ago, someone hauled in a net full of fish from the river and called out, 鈥淪tart the fires!鈥� Fires were started, fish were thrown on the coals, and the weary fisher said, 鈥淚 could really go for a cold one right about now.鈥澨�

Meaningful looks were exchanged, and one guy nodded and said, 鈥淚鈥檝e been carrying these barley seeds.听Give me a stick so I can furrow this rich soil and plant them.鈥� And then a woman noted that she鈥檚 always loved the funky smell of the little cone-shaped flowers of this one vine, and perhaps those could balance out the maltiness of the barley.听鈥淚鈥檒l plant some hops, too,鈥� she added helpfully.听听

And voil脿, eight months the later, the first IPA was brewed.听You听see, in addition to being parched, these people听were also proactive. And patient.

The beer tasted so good, washing down the grilled fish, that they decided to stay.听And build homes. And grow more crops. And the homes became settlements, and the settlements became cities, and then the abundant crops produced food surpluses, which led to the division of labor and all else that followed: written language, the Upanishads, the Sistine Chapel, and those 鈥渄illy dilly鈥� ads for Bud Light.

Perhaps听it didn鈥檛 go quite like that, and I must admit I鈥檓 neither an anthropologist nor a historian. But I am a river scientist and a beer drinker, and it鈥檚 late in the day, so it all sounds plausible to me.

And I do have some evidence: the labels on beer bottles. Specifically, how often they feature rivers.

Something compels us to depict, over and over, representations of where we came from鈥攔ivers鈥攐nto the vessel that holds the elixir of civilization.听Like the ,听in France, beer labels tell us stories about our origins and what we value most.

So here, in celebration of the recent World Rivers Day (September 22),听I鈥檝e reconstructed the history of civilization and rivers, as told by beer labels.听

Mosi Lager

Zambian Breweries (Lusaka, Zambia)

Like a beacon, the mist rising from a massive waterfall on the Zambezi River promises lush vegetation and flowing water in an otherwise arid land. Because the name of that waterfall is Mosi-oa-Tunya鈥斺�渢he smoke that thunders鈥� in the Lozi language鈥攊t was more like a beacon with a soundtrack (also known as Victoria Falls).听For early people, river valleys offered linear oases with channels full of fish and floodplain forests rich in game.听

Steelhead Extra Pale Ale

Mad River Brewing Company (Blue Lake, California)

Is there a more badass name for a fish than steelhead (the migratory form of rainbow trout)? Even before agriculture, river valleys provided a great bounty of food, such as access to migratory fish. That鈥檚 still true today, as听river fisheries support the majority of an annual freshwater-fish harvest of at least 12 million tons, providing the primary source of protein for hundreds of millions of people.

Hoptober Golden Ale

New Belgium Brewing Company (Fort Collins, Colorado)

Because river valleys offered water and bountiful food, they became obvious places to build shelters to store up fish, game, and fruits for the lean seasons鈥攁nd then to celebrate that bounty. Hoptober听depicts that type of autumnal fest, as people gathered along riverbanks to drink the beers they鈥檇 just started brewing and dance around the fire.听Afterward听they鈥檇 dream about the future and, inspired by the beer, ask big questions that challenged the hunter-gatherer status quo: Beyond barley and hops, are there other things we could plant in this fertile soil? If so, what recipes go best with a golden ale? And if that additional planting leads to food surpluses and a division of labor, will this round, rolling thing be of use for anything beyond party tricks?

Seizoen Organic Farmhouse Ale

Logsdon Farmhouse Ales (Washougal, Washington)

The people followed through on their autumnal musings.听They planted more grains and other crops,听and听with all that food rolling in, cities began to grow, and people began to specialize.听Barrels of ale also kept rolling in, and the combination of people with time on their hands to think听plus plentiful beer was a heady one indeed.听Those who specialized in strategic planning clanked their mugs to with shouts of 鈥淕o big or go home!鈥�

Clearwater K枚lsch听

Captain Lawrence Brewing Company (Elmsford, New York)

They did not go home.听They went big. And a few millennia later, they鈥檇 gone nearly everywhere.听One of those big ideas was building dams to store water for irrigation, drinking water, and hydropower, and by 1950, tens of thousands of dams straddled rivers across the world.听

Burning River Pale Ale

Great Lakes Brewing Company (Cleveland, Ohio)

Industry clustered along rivers for their energy and because they conveniently carried waste downstream to鈥� somewhere else.听Although civilization was now happily awash in Chevrolets, Slinkys, and Zeniths, it was also awash in rivers plagued by dying fish, oil slicks, and the occasional fire鈥攊ncluding the one in 1969 on Cleveland鈥檚 Cuyahoga River, memorialized by Burning River Pale Ale.

Lake Erie Sunset Pale Wheat Ale

Collision Bend Brewing Company (Cleveland, Ohio)

That fire sparked local cleanup efforts and also catalyzed the U.S. Clean Water Act, which听led to a听 and countless other rivers.

The recovery of these rivers didn鈥檛 just make them safe for fish again, they made them safe for breweries, which have flocked to the banks of rivers鈥攊ncluding Collision Bend Brewing Company, whose label for Lake Erie Sunset illustrates the view from its听brewpub, where the Cuyahoga enters Lake Erie and not far downstream from where the river caught fire 50 years ago.

Russell Street IPA

Widmer Brothers Brewing (Portland, Oregon)听

Widmer鈥檚 Russell Street IPA also depicts its听brewery鈥檚 location in a riverside neighborhood along .

Perhaps we鈥檝e come full circle in our relationship with beer and rivers: First, we were drawn to rivers to brew beer and conjure up civilization. Eventually, that civilization began using rivers as sewers and factory dumping grounds, and some of them caught fire.听Shocked by the flames and fumes, we cleaned up our act, and听once again, we鈥檝e come down to the rivers to brew our beer and hopefully toast a renewed relationship between civilization and rivers.

But victory toasts are never final. New challenges emerge, and climate change threatens both and , calling on us to redouble our efforts.

Rivers, beer, and civilization have had a good thing going now for . Let鈥檚 not mess that up.

Jeff Opperman is the global freshwater lead scientist at the World Wildlife Fund.

The post The History of Beer Is the History of the World appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

March in northeast Ohio delivered several unexpected gifts: Day after day of pure sunshine, and river monsters that slipped silently into our backyard.

On a cool and clear Saturday, those river monsters dragged me from a self-seeded mental briar patch of angst and distraction. As someone who鈥檚 written about in our too-often over-committed and frenetic world, they delivered a bracing reminder to practice what I preach.

The day started with the realization that I had dropped the ball. My wife, Paola, had searched for the perfect cabin for our spring break, leaving me to choose between two (alas, we had a surprising number of variables to fulfill, including a pond for my fishing-obsessed fourth grader, Luca). Her email with the links to my choices sank deep into my inbox, and I never responded. Four days went by and, that Saturday, we called; both were booked earlier that day.

Needless to say, Paola was not happy. I stammered, protested, apologized, and then vowed I鈥檇 solve the problem.

I sat down at the dining room table, opened my laptop, and began my quest for redemption. Luca filled the vacuum of parental oversight by playing Roblox, a stealth invader freely available on the Internet that had crept past our imperfect vigilance of 鈥渟creen time.鈥�

I wallowed in my failure and the pitiful irony of it all: a gorgeous Saturday spent on a computer, trying to atone for my distracted oversight as my son played video games; I searched for a vacation retreat in nature even as sunlight loped through the trees of the small patch of forest behind our house.

My daughter broke the dark spell. She stood in the kitchen, a hat pulled down almost to her eyes, and said, 鈥淒addy, let鈥檚 go look for treasure in the creek.鈥� Wren had a knack for finding things buried in the gravel of our backyard: bricks from old houses, a toy tin car from the 1930s. These treasures were slowly shuffling their way down the creek, moving a few feet in a flood, then buried again in gravel, waiting for the next flood鈥檚 nudge鈥攐r for a budding archaeologist to unearth them.

I sighed, closed my laptop, and joined her.

We walked through the woods searching the ground for the season鈥檚 first poking through the wet leaves. As we approached a long, flat glide of the creek I saw something out of the corner of my eye. A large, dark shape darted in the clear water under the surface.

It so briefly crossed through the edge of my vision that I was at a loss, 鈥淲hat the … is that an otter?鈥� I couldn鈥檛 think of anything else that size that could be in our tiny creek鈥攅asily crossed by a jump or two on most days.

I clambered over the rocks toward the water, and it darted again. Now looking right at it鈥攁 dark torpedo with a v-shaped wake鈥攊t clicked. I鈥檇 seen this before, salmon knifing through the shallows of a California river. But I still struggled to reconcile this fish with its surroundings. It seemed as logical as a chimp swinging from the oak by our deck.

Another step, another click. 鈥淪teelhead! Wren, there are steelhead in the creek!鈥�

Now I remembered. Just a year before, a huge flood had destroyed a century-old mill dam on the Chagrin River, six miles downstream. The dam had been the primary barrier for steelhead trout swimming up the Chagrin from Lake Erie. ( are simply rainbow trout that live the life of a salmon. They are born in a stream, grow large in the ocean, or in this case, a Great Lake, then return to their birthplace to spawn.) When the dam blew out, I told Luca that the steelhead should be able to swim all the way to Chagrin Falls. But I didn鈥檛 expect them in our creek. Though a small tributary to the Chagrin, our creek鈥檚 connection to the river was through a 570-foot culvert buried under a road, apartment building, and parking lot.

But there they were. Searching the clear water, I saw four of them huddled in the deepest part of the long pool, tucked under some overhanging roots. Another hunkered down next to a rock, looking almost comically out of proportion with its surroundings, like a Great Dane riding in a mini Cooper. The giant fish must have come up during the recent storm when the creek was high. A week of clear weather followed the storm and the water had dropped and now most of the creek was too shallow for them.

I pulled out my phone and called home: 鈥淟uca, you鈥檝e got to see this. There are steelhead in the creek!鈥�

He appeared ridiculously fast, as if he鈥檇 beamed down (or apparated, in his worldview) rather than walked the 400 feet down a steep slope and through the swamp of skunk cabbage.

The kids were enthralled. But they could recognize the fish were oversized for their surroundings and they began to ask about their future.

I knew that the Lake Erie steelhead were maintained by a hatchery because there was little natural reproduction; juvenile steelhead need one to two years in a stream, and our streams simply get too warm during the late summer for them to survive. Thinking that their appearance in this creek must have required unusual flow conditions, I couldn鈥檛 imagine them getting out on their own. 鈥淲ell, the creek is going to keep getting lower and warmer and they鈥檒l probably die,鈥� I told them, speaking like a biologist.

The kids didn鈥檛 want a biologist. They wanted Cousin Diego, or really anybody who would roll up their sleeves and step in and intervene with nature鈥檚 harsh realities. 鈥淐an鈥檛 we save them?鈥� they pleaded.

I didn鈥檛 know what to say. We probably should just leave them alone and let 鈥渘ature run its course.鈥� On the other hand, I thought, what about the native fish of the stream? The steelhead were stocked in the Great Lakes beginning in the 1960s as a replacement for dwindling populations of lake trout. These introduced giants were now in our relatively healthy stream. Unlike salmon, steelhead continue to feed on their upstream migration, and I thought they could wipe out the comparatively puny resident fish during their few weeks鈥� visit. And then I caught myself鈥攚hat the hell鈥檚 wrong with me? Stop thinking like a scientist and just let the kids have fun.

We got a net and a five-gallon bucket and the great steelhead rescue was on.

I waded into the deep part of the pool and flushed a fish upstream. Once it was in the shallows Luca pounced with his net.

The first fish we caught was shockingly big and beautiful, a blaze of red shot through a constellation of black spots on its glistening flanks. Its gill covers too glowed an angry red. As I transferred it from the net to the bucket it flexed and fought, and I struggled to hold on to its 10 pounds of surging muscle.

I awkwardly carried the sloshing bucket to the river, and we released the fish into the flowing water. We repeated that two more times. The net broke capturing the third fish, so the next two we caught with our bare hands.

We sat on the banks of the Chagrin River, exhausted and thrilled. Speaking with an authoritative air, I told the kids that it must have been unusual flow conditions that allowed them to come up our stream, and that we鈥檇 just experienced a wonderful, but rare, gift.

The next week there were 25.

A few days after a small rain, Luca came running up from the creek screaming that it was full of steelhead. I was sure he was exaggerating, but headed down to see. I started at the culvert and walked upstream. I saw one hiding at the edge of a small pool and waded in. Suddenly the pool exploded with four to five fish bursting out, brushing over my feet and knocking into my legs. As I waded upstream, I could see steelhead tucked into nearly every possible spot that provided enough depth to cover their backs. He wasn鈥檛 exaggerating. Our creek was full of steelhead.

Far too many to rescue, I thought. Nature would have to take its course this time.

And eventually it did. But first, the kids took their course. As the creek shrank again, they dammed up areas to make deep 鈥渞ehabilitation ponds鈥� and transferred the fish there. They reported that they were able to get a half dozen into the culvert and that the fish swam away downstream even though the water was just an inch deep through the concrete box.

For a week, the whole neighborhood was captivated. After school, the kids gathered to watch the fish and move them to safer spots, if they could. They gave the fish names and reported on their distinct qualities. The creek, and perhaps all creeks, will never look quite the same to them.

These steelhead seem an apt symbol for nature in the 鈥攖he recently dubbed name for our current geologic era, one characterized by human domination of earth鈥檚 major systems. Here the steelhead are a non-native species introduced to salvage a fishery in damaged lakes. The lakes have made great progress and now support commercial and recreational fisheries valued in the billions. Lake Erie, once declared 鈥渂iologically dead,鈥� now offers up more fish than the other Great Lakes combined in an economically vital fishery composed of both native and introduced species. The with invasive species, climate change, and agricultural runoff threatening to erode decades of progress.

Native or not, these steelhead are ambassadors of wonder that can connect all of us to what persists: lakes and rivers that have been roughed up over the years but still remain the sources of incredible value to the people of the region. They remind us of our responsibilities, both for past losses and for the future. The anthropocene may mean we鈥檝e left our mark nearly everywhere, but it doesn鈥檛 mean that nature has been banished. We still depend on it, whether for or for the adrenaline rush of magnificent, fighting fish that link us to a primal past and shake us to be present in the present.

We had a freakishly warm March, with seven straight days in the 80s. Fuzzy white fungus began to grow on the steelheads’ back and sides. Stinky carcasses, sometimes 30 feet from the creek, revealed that possums, raccoons, and coyotes were also enjoying a wonderful gift.

Finally, there was just one left 鈥攄iminutive, almost small enough to be appropriately proportioned to this creek. He was likely a 鈥渏ack,鈥� a precocious male that returns early as a small fish to surreptitiously join the reproductive dance by sidling up alongside a mating giant like a shepherd boy consorting with a goddess beneath the folds of Zeus鈥� own robe.

Preordained to be scrappy, he persisted weeks longer than the rest, lurking in a deep pool where the kids had moved him with an enormous gnarled root mass providing a labyrinth of cover. He made it through the early hot spell and, who knows, perhaps is still hunkered down in his deep, cool refuge.

I asked Luca what his name was, reflecting on the others they鈥檇 given: Wren Jr., Luca Jr., Aidan Jr., Bomdiggity, Bomdiggity Jr., and Sir Awesome.

鈥淪ir Viver,鈥� he said, 鈥淕et it? Sir … Viver?鈥�

Like nature in the anthropocene: surviving, fighting, persisting and, where given the chance, thriving.

Jeff Opperman is a senior freshwater scientist at , where he focuses on improving the environmental sustainability of hydropower.

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