Greek dining rooms or Enlightenment coffeehouses. Each one became popular when it met a particular need or aligned with a historical trend: in some cases, it then went on to influence the course of history in unexpected ways. Just as archaeologists divide history into different periods based on the use of different materials -- the stone age, the bronze age, the iron age, and so on -- it is also possible divide world history into periods dominated by different drinks. Six drinks in particular -- beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea and cola -- chart the flow of world history. Three contain alcohol and three contain caffeine, but what they all have in common is that each drink was the defining drink during a pivotal historical period, from antiquity to the present day. Beer was first made in the Fertile Crescent and by 3000 BC was so important to Mesopotamia and Egypt that it was being used to pay wages. In ancient Greece, wine became the main export of a vast seaborne trade, helping to spread Greek culture abroad. After the fall of Rome, spirits such as brandy and rum, made using a process devised by Arab alchemists, fueled the Age of Exploration, fortifying seamen on long voyages and oiling the pernicious slave trade. Coffee also originated in the Arab world and went on to inspire scientific, financial and political revolutions in Europe during the Age of Reason, when coffeehouses became centres of intellectual exchange. And hundreds of years after the