When Did Prehistoric Humans Start Drinking Alcohol?

Tonight, somewhere, someone is going to raise a glass. Happy hour with friends, a family dinner, a birthday toast: the glasses clink, somebody says "cheers", and for one moment everyone smiles together. It's so normal we don't even notice it anymore. And yet it's one of the oldest things we do. So when did prehistoric humans start drinking alcohol? The story begins ten million years ago, under a tree heavy with fermenting fruit, with a gene that changed the way our bodies handle alcohol. It runs through the forests of Africa, where wild chimpanzees still take in about one standard drink of alcohol a day just by eating fruit, and sometimes pass it around. And it leads to a 13,000-year-old graveyard on Mount Carmel, where hunter-gatherers brewed beer next to flower-lined graves, before farming even existed. Along the way: the oldest known grape wine in the country of Georgia, malt in the lake villages of Lake Constance and Lake Zurich, 6,000-year-old wine hidden in the steaming caves of Monte Kronio in Sicily, and the Egtved girl, buried in Denmark in the summer of 1370 BC with a small bark bucket. What was left at the bottom of it says a lot about who we were. Chapters 0:00 Tonight, a toast 0:52 The question 1:33 Nobody invented alcohol 2:14 The fallen fruit gene 3:15 Subscribe 3:33 The chimps who drink every day 4:53 The gap in the story 5:36 Beer for the dead 6:51 Beer before bread? 7:31 Why go to all that trouble? 8:29 The world starts fermenting 9:25 Italy's oldest wine 10:34 The Egtved girl 11:42 The answer 12:26 Ending Main sources Carrigan et al., PNAS (2014-2015) – ADH4 and the ~10-million-year-old mutation Dudley, The Drunken Monkey (2014) Maro, Dudley et al. 2025, Science Advances – ethanol ingestion via frugivory in wild chimpanzees (Ngogo, Uganda; Taï, Ivory Coast) Bowland, Hockings et al. 2025, Current Biology – wild chimpanzees sharing fermented fruit (Cantanhez, Guinea-Bissau) Nadel et al. 2013, PNAS – flower-lined Natufian graves at Raqefet Cave Liu, Wang, Nadel et al. 2018, Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports – 13,000-year-old beer at Raqefet Cave Braidwood et al. 1953, American Anthropologist – "Did Man Once Live by Beer Alone?" Dunbar et al. 2017, Adaptive Human Behavior and Physiology – functional benefits of (modest) alcohol consumption McGovern et al. 2004, PNAS – fermented beverages of Jiahu, China McGovern, Batiuk et al. 2017, PNAS – Neolithic wine in Georgia Heiss et al. 2020, PLOS ONE – malting evidence from Lake Constance and Lake Zurich villages Tanasi et al. 2017, Microchemical Journal – Copper Age wine at Monte Kronio, Sicily National Museum of Denmark – the Egtved girl and her drink Dates are approximate and follow the most recent estimates of the studies cited. #prehistory #history #alcohol