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Humankind's 10 million year love affair with booze might end
- cjs_ac 11mo agohttps://archive.is/KVT11 https://archive.is/KVT11
- iLoveOncall 11mo agoThere's a paywall so I'm not sure what the article discusses, but humanity hasn't existed for anywhere close to 10M years.
- andsoitis 11mo ago> humanity hasn't existed for anywhere close to 10M years. From the article: " Humans, unusually, have a pair of enzymes that turf it out like night-club bouncers. Our ability to process alcohol has deep evolutionary roots. Ten million years ago a common ancestor of humans, chimpanzees and gorillas acquired a mutation that let them remove ethanol from the body more efficiently. This adaptation coincided with a change of habitat. Tropical forests were collapsing, notes Robin Dunbar of Oxford University. Some 90% of apes went extinct. One lineage survived by leaving the trees and foraging on the ground."
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- onionisafruit 11mo agoI haven’t read the whole thing, but it starts off talking about a gene mutation in our ancestors species 10 million years ago that lets us process alcohol. So they are taking a little artistic license.
- jibal 11mo agoWelcome to the world of headline writing. https://archive.is/KVT11 https://archive.is/KVT11 Humanity's gene for processing alcohol has existed for 10M years, and that's what they are actually talking about.
- Retric 11mo agoA mutation in our ancestors 10 million years ago likely spread due ground fruit fermenting, becoming toxic to other creatures thus creating an ecological niche. So, even if they were not human it’s reasonable to say the love affair is that old and shared with other species. “Ten million years ago a common ancestor of humans, chimpanzees and gorillas acquired a mutation that let them remove ethanol from the body more efficiently. This adaptation coincided with a change of habitat. Tropical forests were collapsing, notes Robin Dunbar of Oxford University. Some 90% of apes went extinct. One lineage survived by leaving the trees and foraging on the ground. Whereas apes in trees gobbled fresh fruit, those on the ground found fallen fruit, which ferments. Thus, our ancestors may have acquired a taste for alcohol–which allowed them to use these scarce calories. This “drunken monkey” hypothesis suggests that a love of the smell and taste of alcohol, the sign of an energy-rich fruit, gave our ancestors an edge. Their chosen poison would have been fairly weak. A study of overripe wild Panamanian palm fruits found none stronger than 5% alcohol—about the same as a Heineken.“
- darubedarob 11mo agoThere is that pet theory that alcohlism also converted us from nomads to agrarian societies as mead and bear are impractical to make year round while on the move.
- SanjayMehta 11mo agoIt's just The Economist: they specialise in click bait written in a dry, British professor style.
- m463 11mo agoclickbait 101
- zoklet-enjoyer 11mo agoWe already have GBL
- ericskiff 11mo agoFor anyone taking this comment seriously, please research and understand the potential long term impacts of GBL before going near it. It's neurotoxic and can cause brainfog and lowered cognitive ability. It's also lethal in the wrong dose, with a tiny margin for error. It's by no means a safe alcohol replacement
- zoklet-enjoyer 11mo agoYeah so basically the same thing as alcohol
- awakeasleep 11mo agoYour response feels like a gut-level averse reaction, not an actual weighing of the harms against alcohol, which is about the most harmful drug ever for every system in your body, and also has a relatively small margin between lethality and and recreational doses.
- kergonath 11mo ago> which is about the most harmful drug ever for every system in your body I am not saying that alcohol is good for you or anything, but that is not even wrong. It’s trivial to find drugs that kill you or nuke your liver if you get a few milligrams. > also has a relatively small margin between lethality and and recreational doses. Unless by "recreational dose" you mean a whole bottle of 40% ABV spirits, not really. And even then. IIRC the lethal dose is around 7g/kg, which is more than a pint of pure ethanol for someone weighting 70kg, or twice the amount of alcohol in the bottle. This is not a particularly small margin of error, particularly considering that the hypotheses were conservative. It is possible to kill oneself with alcohol. It is nowhere near the dose commonly taken for recreative purposes.
- jeffbee 11mo ago
- donohoe 11mo agoJust to say that humans have only been here around 300,000 years. “Human-kind” is a stretch.
- esseph 11mo agoWe've been harnessing fire for over 400,000 years https://www.npr.org/2025/12/11/nx-s1-5640109/early-humans-fire-making-oldest-discovery-archaeology https://www.npr.org/2025/12/11/nx-s1-5640109/early-humans-fi... > The discovery suggests early humans were making fire more than 350,000 years earlier than previously known. > "For me, personally, it's the most exciting discovery of my 40-year career," Ashton said.
- sarimkx 11mo agohttps://archive.md/KVT11 https://archive.md/KVT11
- wakawaka28 11mo agoThe point of drinking is to get a buzz. Most alcoholic drinks taste bad anyway, and would not be consumed if not for that. The only people who would need a pill to stop after one drink are hardcore alcoholics. This guy is either really stupid, marketing for some upcoming product, or propagandizing against alcohol because they found it is actually good for you after all lol.
- danpalmer 11mo agoYou're stating your opinions as fact. Personally I love the taste of many cocktails, wines, and beer. They taste good to me. I think drinking for the buzz demonstrates an immaturity with alcohol consumption. One many have, but an immaturity nonetheless.
- seec 11mo agoI do like the taste of the high-end stuff as well. But the point is precisely to get a buzz while not suffering the bad sides of the cheap stuff. Otherwise there are plenty of very good drinks that have no alcohol, if you want to drink for taste, there is really no need to go for alcoholic stuff. There is a lot of snobery around the expensive stuff precisely because you need to be wealthy enough to afford it. It is just another class signifier. People drinking those things like the fact that they can get buzzed while still enjoying the taste, outside of true alcoholics, everybody prefer that but they just can't afford it. Making good alcohol is an art form. It is a very complex process that relies on quality inputs as well as mastery of a refined recipe. It is no a trivial endeavor and this why many of the good alcohols were produced/invented by monks and priest, they were the ones with enough time and ressources on their hands to focus on this unproductive pursuit. Nowadays the lines are blurred because it is commercialised and profitable but the consumers of the good stuff are very similar to the priests of old (high status/power), they just delegated the process thanks to their power afforded by money.
- wakawaka28 11mo ago>You're stating your opinions as fact. So what? I have an opinion, backed up by years of being in bars and talking to people who actually like to drink. If you need a disclaimer in a comment, maybe you need to go have a drink to take the edge off. >I think drinking for the buzz demonstrates an immaturity with alcohol consumption. One many have, but an immaturity nonetheless. People of all ages enjoy the effects of alcohol. I don't think many would consume it if not for those effects. The people you are calling immature, would call you a goober.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- brador 11mo agoHigh calorie, high nutrition. It’s candy with nutrients and a deeper buzz. Survival food, low effort to consume, no cooking required, source grows in famines, doesn’t rot.
- keernan 11mo agotldr; Our love affair with booze might be replaced by hi-tech alternatives
- ofrzeta 11mo agoNot in my lifetime, that's for sure.