Imagine you're a human living thousands ...

Audio by Paper2Audio

Imagine you're a human living thousands of years ago.

No supermarket.

No refrigerator.

No clean glass of water waiting for you at home.

And definitely no bottle of beer sitting in the fridge.

You've spent the entire day hunting and gathering food.

You're tired.

You're hungry.

And then, while walking through the forest, you find something.

Fruit.

But there's a problem.

The fruit isn't fresh.

It's soft.

It's bruised.

It's been sitting there for days.

It smells strange.

Most people today would look at it and throw it away.

But you're a prehistoric human.

You don't have a supermarket.

You don't have food delivery.

You don't even have Google to tell you whether it's safe.

So you look at the fruit.

You look at your friend.

Your friend looks at you.

And eventually, someone has to make the decision.

"Well... let's try it."

And that tiny decision may have been the beginning of one of the strangest relationships in human history.

Our relationship with alcohol.

But here's the surprising part.

Humans probably didn't invent alcohol.

Nature did.

And it had been making it for a very, very long time.

The secret was something so small that you couldn't even see it.

Yeast.

Yeast is a microscopic organism, and it absolutely loves sugar.

And fruit is basically a giant package of sugar.

When fruit becomes damaged or overripe, naturally occurring yeast can begin consuming those sugars.

And when yeast consumes sugar, something interesting happens.

It produces carbon dioxide...

and ethanol.

Ethanol is the type of alcohol found in beer, wine, and many other alcoholic drinks.

So while early humans were hunting animals, making stone tools, and trying to survive...

tiny microorganisms were quietly producing alcohol all around them.

Nobody had to invent it.

Nobody needed a laboratory.

Nobody needed a recipe.

Nature was already running the experiment.

All humans had to do was discover the result.

And this is where things get interesting.

Imagine finding a piece of fruit that has naturally fermented.

It doesn't taste quite like normal fruit.

It smells different.

It might even be slightly fizzy.

And depending on how much fermentation has occurred, it may contain alcohol.

Now put yourself in the mind of someone who has absolutely no idea what fermentation is.

You don't know what yeast is.

You don't know what ethanol is.

You don't know anything about chemistry.

You just know that this strange fruit tastes different...

and then something even stranger happens.

You feel different.

Maybe you feel relaxed.

Maybe you're laughing.

Maybe you're stumbling around.

Maybe you fall over and your friends think you're dying.

And then...

you get back up.

And you're fine.

Now imagine the next thought.

Not...

"What just happened?"

But...

"Can I make this happen again?"

Because that's something humans are exceptionally good at.

We don't just discover things.

We try to reproduce them.

And once humans realized that fermented food could produce interesting results, they could begin experimenting.

Instead of waiting for fruit to accidentally ferment on the ground...

what if we put it somewhere ourselves?

What if we crushed it?

What if we added water?

What if we stored it in a container?

What if we waited longer?

And slowly...

accident became technology.

But there was another discovery that made all of this much easier.

Agriculture.

Before farming, humans mostly had to find whatever food nature happened to provide.

But once humans started growing crops, everything changed.

Suddenly, we had enormous quantities of grains, fruits, and other plants.

And that meant something extremely useful for fermentation.

Sugar.

And starch.

Grains are particularly interesting because they contain starch, which can eventually be converted into sugars that microorganisms can ferment.

So humans now had a reliable supply of raw materials...

and a reason to experiment.

And eventually...

something incredible happened.

Humans figured out how to turn grains into beer.

Now, don't imagine modern beer.

Forget the cold bottle.

Forget the perfect golden color.

Forget the foam.

Ancient beer could be cloudy, thick, and full of sediment.

It probably looked more like a strange fermented porridge than the drink we know today.

But it was still beer.

And by thousands of years ago, people in the ancient Near East were deliberately producing fermented beverages.

Then humanity made another invention that completely changed our ability to understand the past.

Writing.

And suddenly...

we have receipts.

Ancient civilizations started recording things.

How much grain was produced.

How much food was distributed.

How many workers received supplies.

And, apparently...

how much beer people were getting.

In ancient Mesopotamia, beer wasn't some mysterious drink made by a few people in secret.

It had become part of everyday society.

It could be consumed by workers.

It could be traded.

It could be connected to religious practices.

It could have economic value.

And it became important enough to appear in written records.

The Sumerians even had a goddess associated with beer.

Her name was Ninkasi.

And there is an ancient hymn dedicated to her that describes parts of the brewing process.

Think about how strange that is.

Thousands of years ago, humans were not only drinking beer...

they were writing songs about it.

But beer wasn't the only alcoholic drink humans discovered.

There was another one that required something much simpler.

Grapes.

Grapes are particularly convenient because their skins can naturally carry yeast.

So when grapes are crushed, their sugary juice comes into contact with yeast.

And fermentation can begin.

The result...

is wine.

And humans have been making wine for an incredibly long time.

Archaeological evidence from what is now Georgia suggests that people were making wine around eight thousand years ago.

Eight thousand years.

That's an almost impossible amount of time to imagine.

Eight thousand years ago, there were no modern countries.

There were no skyscrapers.

No cars.

No factories.

No smartphones.

There wasn't even anything resembling the world we live in today.

And yet...

people were already turning grapes into wine.

And once humans understood that fermentation could happen deliberately, the idea spread.

And humans did what humans always do.

They experimented.

Rice?

Let's ferment it.

Honey?

Let's ferment it.

Fruit?

Let's ferment it.

Grains?

Definitely ferment those.

Different cultures developed different drinks using whatever raw materials were available around them.

Different climates created different conditions.

Different crops produced different flavors.

Different communities developed different brewing and fermentation techniques.

And eventually, alcoholic drinks became deeply connected to human civilization.

In ancient Egypt, beer was an important part of everyday life.

Workers could receive beer as part of their provisions.

Wine was also produced and consumed.

Across the ancient Mediterranean, wine became connected with food, social gatherings, religion, and culture.

The Greeks developed elaborate drinking traditions.

The Romans expanded wine production across enormous parts of their empire.

And as humans traveled...

they carried their fermentation knowledge with them.

But here's something important.

Alcohol wasn't always about getting drunk.

Throughout history, fermented drinks served many different purposes.

They provided calories.

They could be stored.

They became part of meals.

They were used in celebrations.

They appeared in religious ceremonies.

They were traded.

They were sometimes associated with medicine.

And in some societies, they became such a normal part of daily life that drinking them was simply part of the culture.

Alcohol had transformed from a strange side effect of rotting fruit...

into something deeply connected to human society.

But humans weren't finished.

Because fermentation had a problem.

There was a limit to how much alcohol yeast could produce.

Eventually, the alcohol concentration became too high for the yeast to keep working effectively.

So humans found another trick.

Distillation.

Instead of simply fermenting a liquid, humans could heat it.

Alcohol vaporizes more readily than water.

That vapor could then be collected...

cooled...

and turned back into liquid.

The result was a much more concentrated alcoholic drink.

Distillation was a major technological development.

And interestingly, it wasn't originally just about making people drunk.

Distillation techniques were also used in things like perfumes, medicines, and other substances.

But eventually, humans figured out that the same technology could be used to create much stronger alcoholic beverages.

And just like that...

our accidental discovery had become a sophisticated technology.

So now we can finally return to the original question.

How did humans discover alcohol?

Who was the first person?

Was it a prehistoric hunter who ate fermented fruit?

Was it an ancient farmer?

Was it an early brewer?

Was it someone who accidentally left grape juice sitting around?

The truth is...

we don't know.

And that's actually one of the most interesting parts of the story.

There probably wasn't one person who discovered alcohol.

There probably wasn't a single moment when humanity suddenly figured it out.

Instead, it was probably a process that happened over a very long period of time.

Nature was already fermenting fruit.

Humans encountered fermented foods and drinks.

They noticed that they tasted different.

They noticed that they produced unusual effects.

They experimented.

Then agriculture gave them more raw materials.

Civilization gave them better containers and better techniques.

Writing allowed them to record what they were doing.

And thousands of years of experimentation turned a natural process...

into human technology.

Think about that the next time you see a glass of wine.

Or a bottle of beer.

You're not just looking at a drink.

You're looking at the end result of thousands of years of human experimentation.

A story that began before written history.

Before cities.

Before empires.

Before anyone understood chemistry.

And perhaps...

before anyone even understood what they had discovered.

Somewhere near the beginning of that story, there may have been nothing more complicated than a piece of fruit...

some naturally occurring yeast...

a little time...

and one extremely curious human.

Someone who looked at a suspicious piece of fruit...

thought about all the reasons they probably shouldn't eat it...

and then decided...

"Eh. How bad could it be?"

And somehow...

that decision helped begin one of the longest-running experiments in human history.

We just call the result...

alcohol.