Who drank the first beer? Getting buzzed definitely has very deep historical roots. The earliest evidence of any fermented beverage is fruit-based, aka wine, and comes from the Jiahu site in China and dates back to around 7,000 BCE (9,000 years ago). In addition to fermented beverage residue in China, we have grain-based, aka beer/ale, residue in pottery going back to 5000 BCE in the Middle East, 4000 BCE in Europe, but it’s the Sumerians that wrote down the earliest known beer recipe in 1800 BCE. Go Sumerians! Before all this, it’s a mystery awaiting discovery, but we know chimpanzees pick up rotting fermented fruit on the jungle floor to get drunk, pushing potential roots back 7.5 million years to our common ancestor.
Spirituality.
3 random tidbit stories in about 3 minutes.
1.
Spirituality Story.
circa 7000 BCE
9,000 Years Ago
That Spirituality Story,
was first published on TST 2 years ago.
2.
Spirituality FAQ.
The Buddha taught rebirth, not reincarnation. He rejected the idea of an eternal soul being reborn in a new body. Instead, he spoke of an underlying essence or energy transitioning from one life to another, rather than the persistence of a soul or self. Our essence—driven by karma—is reborn, but without a permanent self. Beyond reincarnation, the Buddha suggested a continuity, a stream of being that transcends individual lives, challenging traditional ideas of identity and existence.
This distinction aligns more with a materialist perspective, suggesting that the fundamental nature of existence is energy or matter. In Buddhist terms of self, non-self, and emptiness, he challenged the idea of a “self,” replacing it with the doctrine of non-self and emptiness. Buddhist emptiness, or nondualism, asserts that your mind is part of the universe, and emptiness is a way to rid yourself of the illusion that it is separate.
The concept of emptiness teaches that nothing has a permanent essence. Everything, including yourself, arises due to various conditions and ceases when those conditions no longer exist. A chair is a chair until it is not.
The Buddha taught that understanding emptiness and non-self helps overcome suffering by revealing the true nature of reality. Imagine yourself standing by a river, surrounded by lush forest. As you take in the beauty, you realize that the separation between yourself and nature is just an illusion.
That Spirituality FAQ,
was first published on TST 2 years ago.
3.
Spirituality Story.
1858
Lived from 1858 to 1947, aged 89.
Max Planck was born in 1858, the year before Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species. His journey from a traditional, classically trained physicist to the “reluctant revolutionary” of quantum mechanics is one of the most important pivots in the history of science. He didn’t set out to break physics; he simply wanted to fix a stubborn mathematical problem.
Up to Planck, physics treated energy as continuous: a smooth stream, like a firehose. After Planck, energy came in packets—quanta. He was a professor at the University of Berlin, and his specific “Eureka” moment occurred at home on October 7, 1900, after a visit from fellow physicist Heinrich Rubens, whose experimental results refused to fit classical expectations.
Ironically, Planck disliked his own discovery for years. He was a classical physicist at heart and hoped that these “quanta” were merely a mathematical trick or a property of atoms, not a fundamental feature of light itself. It wasn’t until Albert Einstein used Planck’s idea in 1905 to explain the photoelectric effect that the scientific world realized Planck had uncovered something profound: the grainy nature of reality.
Planck did something quietly radical. He accepted what the math demanded. More than any single discovery, this is the lesson we can still learn from his legacy.
Planck understood this tension too. Later in life, he reflected that scientific advances often proceed “one funeral at a time.”
Planck lived through two world wars in the heart of Germany. His eldest son was killed in World War I, and his only other son was executed by the Nazi regime for his role in attempting to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Though marked by immense personal loss, Planck’s family line did not end with him. His descendants live on today.
That Spirituality Story,
was first published on TST 4 months ago.
The end. Refresh for another set.
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Writing and coding by Michael Alan Prestwood.
(c) 2025-2026 TouchstoneTruth.
Writing and coding by Michael Alan Prestwood.
