Issue Date: October 18, 2010 Beer: Ancient, Space, Fried … And
Troublesome As National Chemistry Week kicks off, what better
topic to whet the scientific appetite than the Sci-Mix beverage
of choice? BEER CONSUMPTION, of course, goes back several
millennia. It turns out, however, that the beer brewed in
ancient Nubia around A.D. 450 had a little extra kick. Chemist
Mark Nelson of Boston’s Paratek Pharmaceuticals, anthropologist
George Armelagos of Emory University, and colleagues have found
that the bones of Nubians—who lived in the region that is
present-day Sudan—were saturated with the antibiotic
tetracycline (Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 2010, 143, 151). The
researchers believe that the Nubians made the antibiotic by
fermenting beer with grain that contained the soil bacteria
Streptomyces, which produces tetracycline. They also think that
the Nubians produced the antibiotic beer intentionally. The
Nubian culture revered gold and likely prized golden colonies of
Streptomyces. Additionally, other ancient culture