When Did Ancient Humans Start Drinking Alcohol?

A small primate is sitting in a tree forty million years ago, eating a piece of overripe fruit. The yeast on the skin has been turning the sugar into alcohol. The fruit tastes richer. The primate likes it. And by sunset, it has done something its ancestors had never done before. It has gotten a little drunk. When did ancient humans start drinking alcohol? Who invented beer? Why did hunter-gatherers brew before they farmed? Why is wine called the blood of Dionysus? This video covers the real science of prehistoric drinking — from Robert Dudley's drunken monkey hypothesis, to the ten-million-year-old ADH4 mutation that let primates digest ethanol, to Li Liu's 13,000-year-old Natufian beer at Raqefet Cave, to the drink before bread theory of agriculture, to Patrick McGovern's 9,000-year-old Jiahu cocktail, to the world's oldest winery at Areni-1 in Armenia, to Sumerian beer goddess Ninkasi, to Egyptian pyramid workers paid in beer. We did not invent alcohol. We co-evolved with it.