Drinks – is a component of food that serves to satisfy thirst. All peoples, even the most primitive ones, have a certain set of foods, but a number of hunter-gatherer peoples use only water as drinks. However, even at the level of gathering and hunting, the use of special drinks is encountered: the juice of fruits and berries, the sap from pruning trees, meat broth, and drinks with narcotic and hallucinogenic effects obtained by boiling or squeezing certain plants. The use of the latter has always been ritualized and in one way or another is associated with cult-magic beliefs.
Bread and yeast, sour drinks like kvass are widespread among the agricultural peoples of Europe and the Caucasus. In mountainous areas they drink decoctions of aromatic herbs. The urban culture of a number of European nations developed their own non-alcoholic hot drinks with the use of honey and spices (such as Russian sbitnya). Finally, all peoples practicing dairy cattle breeding have whole, skimmed, sour milk, rag, buttermilk as drinks, sometimes mixed with blood, aromatic herbs, salt, sugary substances. Sour milk drinks made of mare (koumiss) and camel (shubat) milk occupy a special place in nomadic culture.
Such drinks as tea, coffee, and cocoa, respectively of East Asian, East African, and Mesoamerican origin, were the most widely included in the global culture. Peoples who today (from Japan to Somalia) cannot imagine life without tea did without it until several centuries ago and drank decoction of crushed roasted millet or rice grains. And in East Asia, even to this day, such floury mash often serves as a substitute for tea (Korea, mountainous regions of South-East Asia). Arab coffee drinking, Japanese tea drinking, and the South American custom of yerba mate (drinking decoction of Paraguayan holly leaves) are no longer just drinks, but a complex and socially significant ceremony.
Various alcohol-containing drinks occupy a special place in the food systems of agricultural and pastoral peoples. They are known among almost all peoples of the Old World, with the exception of specialized hunters and fishermen. The data of ethnographic and linguistic sciences allow us to conclude that the age of relevant skills is very long. At different stages of cultural development, they were acquired and developed independently by different peoples. Peoples who were engaged in gathering, periodically fermented fruit juices containing sugar of wild fruits or tree sap (palm, birch, maple), as well as wild honey to wine state. Making wine from grapes (at first mostly from wild grapes) has been known in many parts of western Asia since Neolithic times and from there, together with the grape culture, spread to North Africa, Europe, and Southeast Asia. Nomadic and pastoralist peoples knew the alcoholic fermentation of milk, such as the preparation of koumiss and kefir with an alcohol content of 2-3%. Farming peoples made beer from plants that contained starch and served as the main cultivated crops (corn, rice, millet, barley, and other grains). The need to increase the concentration of alcohol led to the production of vodka by means of the distillation method. The prerequisite for this was the appearance of refractory (metal or ceramic) vessels.
The preparation of alcoholic beverages is often associated with various ritual injunctions and manipulations and in traditional culture is usually done collectively. Drinks are consumed on some common cult or other festive occasions. The low strength of natural (not distilled) traditional drinks and the strict ritual and etiquette framework of their consumption put a certain obstacle in the way of emergence of alcoholic pathologies in the traditionalist society.
However, already antique urbanization, which undid most of the ritual taboos, was familiar with the problem of alcoholism. Characteristically, while tribal religions often imply taking alcoholic beverages in the course of ritual, two of the three world religions (Islam and Buddhism) impose an unequivocal prohibition on them, which, however, has not been consistently observed in many places. The emergence of distilled strong drinks has made the problem of alcoholism quite acute in practically all urbanized societies.