What Was the First Alcohol? Tracing the Oldest Known Drinks Through the Archaeological Record

The video explains that all the beverages it discusses were made through fermentation, in which yeast and sometimes bacteria produce alcohol. Stronger drinks usually involve distillation, which concentrates alcohol through evaporation and condensation.

Reid Reimers notes that distilled beverages are not in contention for the oldest ever. Although distillation to purify seawater goes back to Aristotle, it was not applied to alcohol until the 12th century. Reliable distillation required sophisticated equipment that could withstand heat, along with a system to cool the vapor quickly so that it condensed. The list that follows is therefore ranked from the most recent to the oldest, according to the availability of hard evidence for each beverage.

The journey begins in Teotihuacan, an ancient city of pyramids near present-day Mexico City. The city existed from 150 BCE to 650 CE, and its murals appear to depict people drinking pulque, a fermented beverage made from the sap of the agave plant. Archaeologists know that pulque has great significance for people in the region up to the present day, but it was unclear when it originated.

In 2014, researchers analyzed more than 300 shards of pottery vessels from the city. Alcohol itself is water soluble and would rarely survive for so long, but porous clay can absorb organic residues from the liquids it once held. Using gas chromatography and mass spectrometry, the researchers looked not for alcohol directly but for a biomarker from the bacterium Zymomonas mobilis, which works together with yeast to produce ethanol during agave fermentation. The biomarker was found on 14 shards dated between 200 and 550 CE. Some of the same shards were sealed with resin from a coniferous tree, which indicates that the contents needed a tight, waterproof seal.

The researchers suggest that pulque may have served as a nutritional supplement. The city's residents mainly ate corn and beans, a reasonably balanced diet, but skeletal remains show signs of malnutrition, especially among lower-status residents. Agave is much hardier than corn, so the researchers speculate that pulque may have been an important source of nutrients during frosts or droughts. The video adds that pulque hosts probiotic bacteria, increases the absorption of iron from other sources, and is thick enough to help people feel full.

The origins of cider are as hazy as an unfiltered cider. Apples were first domesticated in central Asia, somewhere between 2,000 and 8,000 BCE, and eventually reached Europe along the Silk Road.

One of the first references to the drink comes from the Roman scientist Pliny the Elder, who in 77 CE wrote a long list of the things that could be made into wine. The list included apples and pears, which clearly means cider. It was wide-ranging, which suggests that people were already fermenting many kinds of fruit at that time, including pomegranates, dates, figs and carob.

Reid Reimers describes Pliny's account as the oldest written evidence for cider. He adds that people could have been making cider for as long as they had apples, but there is no record of that.

Pliny's book also includes one of the simplest recipes, made from just water and honey to produce mead. Mead probably deserves a higher place on the list because of this simplicity. The yeast needed for fermentation naturally occurs in honey, so only water needs to be added. Reid Reimers says mead may be in the running to be the oldest alcoholic beverage ever, and it certainly predates Pliny's time.

Many ancient cultures in Europe, Africa and Asia independently developed some form of mead. Direct evidence is hard to find. Cave art near Valencia, Spain, dating to around 6,000 BCE, shows people collecting honey from a wild beehive. Archaeologists have also found 40,000-year-old beeswax collected by humans in a cave in South Africa. These finds show that people used honey and beeswax for a long time, but the video notes that there is a gap between that and the fermentation needed to make mead.

Reid Reimers says the oldest evidence for mead is linguistic. A common root, *médʰu, reconstructed in Proto-Indo-European, is the ancestor of words in English, Sanskrit, Greek, Polish, Slovenian, German and many other languages. The root not only came to mean mead itself but has also meant honey, sweet, intoxicating and drunk in various languages.

According to the video, linguists read these multiple meanings as evidence that the original root referred to the alcoholic beverage, not just to honey. Proto-Indo-European is thought to have been spoken about 5,000 years ago, which makes mead at least that old. The root is probably older still, although its exact date is difficult to establish.

Reid Reimers says the first definitive chemical evidence of a fermented rice beverage comes from around 7000 BCE at Jiahu, a settlement in northern China. A 2004 study analyzed shards from 16 ancient pottery jars using liquid chromatography, infrared spectrometry and stable isotope analysis. Taken together, the results closely matched modern rice wine, grape wine and beeswax. The researchers concluded that the jars once contained a drink made from rice, honey and some kind of fruit.

The video notes that this can be called either the oldest direct evidence for mead, because it included honey, or the oldest evidence for rice wine. The fruit remains uncertain: the researchers specifically found tartaric acid, which points to grapes and could make this the first grape wine. But tartaric acid could also have come from Chinese hawthorn, so the result is not conclusive. Reimers says the beverage was probably something people would not recognize today.

Wild grapes have likely been eaten since Paleolithic hunter-gatherer times, and they can ferment on the vine without much human help. Genetic analysis indicates that humans domesticated both wine grapes and table grapes around the dawn of agriculture, roughly 9,000 BCE. The oldest archaeological evidence for making pure grape wine dates to about 6,000 BCE in what is now the country of Georgia. Reimers notes that this is younger than the Jiahu drink, but it is included because of the genetic evidence.

A 2017 study identified this by finding organic molecules absorbed into Neolithic clay pottery. The settlements were made of mudbrick houses, and each house had around 55 liters' worth of winemaking jars, which indicates large-scale production. The pottery contained tartaric acid, and ancient grape pollen is widespread in the area, suggesting that grapes grew there at the right time. Patrick McGovern led this study and the Jiahu study, and he was known as the Indiana Jones of alcohol. Throughout his career his discoveries pushed back the date of the oldest known grape wine three times. Even so, grape wine is still a long way from the oldest booze.

The video identifies the oldest archaeological evidence for fermented alcoholic beverages as beer. Making beer probably happened in steps. When grain gets wet, enzymes convert starch into maltose sugar, a process known as malting, which likely led to the discovery of porridge. If the porridge is left too long, wild yeast from the air settles in and starts fermentation. From there, the process could go in one of two directions, toward beer or toward bread.

Archaeologists debate whether grain agriculture was first developed to support beer or bread. Some early beer recipes used bread as an ingredient, which suggests bread came first. Others argue that early wild cereals were better suited to beer making than to bread. A 2007 study mapped the genetic diversity of yeast strains and found that bread strains sit between beer and wine, which the video presents as another point in favor of beer.

The next possible evidence for brewing beer comes from Göbekli Tepe, in what is today Turkey, at around 9000 BCE. There it may have played a pivotal role in the dawn of feasting culture. Reimers says feasting is about more than a good party: it forges alliances, strengthens a group's coherence and establishes social structures, all of which were important for the development of early cities and societies.

Beer eventually appeared in many parts of the ancient world. The video cites barley beer in China from around 3000 BCE, the first industrial-scale brewery in Egypt at about the same time, and chicha, a corn beer brewed in Peru from around 600 CE. Reimers adds that the Natufians seem to have been a few pints ahead of everyone else.

Beer is the earliest evidence for humans brewing alcohol, but Reimers says it may not have been the first alcohol our ancestors drank. Primates gained the ability to metabolize ethanol about 10 million years ago, and humans are not the only species that takes advantage of it today. Palm tree sap can ferment naturally to as much as 6.9 percent alcohol by volume with little human intervention.

A 2015 study looked at 17 years of chimpanzee observations in West Africa and found that the animals repeatedly drink fermented palm sap, sometimes using leaves as tools to extract it from the trees. Palm wine is made from the same sap and has a history going back at least to ancient Egypt and probably Palestine. The video notes that there is no direct archaeological evidence of humans drinking palm wine earlier than that, though it is speculated to be much older. Palm wine leaves little physical evidence, so archaeologists are unlikely to find traces of it thousands of years later.

Reimers concludes that alcohol has served as a nutritional supplement during times of crop failure. It has brought people together and acted as a social lubricant that helped forge alliances. It may even have helped drive other fundamental technologies, such as crop domestication and agriculture. He suggests that while it is fun to imagine our ancestors making questionable decisions long before history could record them, booze was not just a drink but a cutting-edge technology.