“Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker.” – Ogden Nash

History can be written from almost any perspective. There are lengthy histories of rust, salt, cod, germs, weapons, and horses, among many other narrow topics. The better ones often contain remarkable insights into wider general history. One pleasant example that arrived in my mail recently is A Short History of Drunkenness by Mark Forsyth. There are other more comprehensive histories of alcohol, but this is on drunkenness, which is a much more specific thing. In our ever more humorless society, some might take issue with Forsyth’s lighthearted tone even when discussing criminal or self-destructive behavior. For those who still can laugh at the human condition while nonetheless taking it seriously, however, the tone is just right.

Venus of Laussel

Humans consumed alcohol before they were, strictly speaking, human. Our great ape cousins love to get buzzed on overripe fruit, which naturally ferments to an alcohol content equal to beer. Our ancestors surely were no different. Modern humans used their bigger brains to learn how deliberately to ferment fruits and grains early in prehistory. The 25,000-year-old Venus of Laussel shows a woman knocking back a horn of something. A drinking horn is an inconvenient vessel for water. Historical peoples didn’t use horns for that, but until the past few centuries they were widely used for beer or wine. (You still can get one if you wish.) It’s a good bet the lady was tying one on. The Laussel folk and their contemporaries were at the mercy of the seasonal availability of fruits, honey, and grains in the wild however.

This suggests an answer to the mystery of why humans started farming. The hunter-gatherer lifestyle provides a healthier and more varied diet for less work. (Once farming is established it becomes a trap as anthropologist Jared Diamond has noted; the reasons for that are beside the point here where the question is why start at all.) Given that traces of alcohol are found on the very oldest shards of prehistoric pottery, one altogether serious hypothesis is that grains were planted and harvested in order to guarantee a steady supply of beer.

The oldest monumental stone construction site in the world is at Gobekli Tepe in present-day Turkey. It dates back to the end of the last ice age and, astonishingly, was built by nomad hunter-gatherers. There are 40-gallon (150-liter) stone tubs on the site with traces of oxalate, which is formed when you mix barley and water to ferment beer. The area was rich in wild grains at the time, but if you are going to erect a monumental stone beer hall for a Mesolithic Oktoberfest, you probably want to be doubly sure you can brew enough beer to serve all the clans who show up. “And so in about 9000 BC we invented farming because we wanted to get drunk on a regular basis.”

Prehistory being…well…prehistory, all that is speculative, but it is based on compelling if sparse evidence. Once we are in historical times there is no longer any doubt. One of the earliest Sumerian records, other than business contracts, is a poem of praise to Ankasi, goddess of beer, which includes a recipe for making it. Ancient Egyptians annually celebrated the Festival of Drunkenness (exactly what it sounds like) in honor of the goddess Hathor. Dionysus, god of wine in ancient Greece, had a dark side to him (as brilliantly depicted in Bacchae by Euripides), but was honored at symposia where wine literally made people philosophical. Forsyth notes the development of different fermenting and distillation processes over the centuries and the role of drunkenness (not just imbibition but getting sloshed) in history up until the current day. He describes what it was like to visit such various establishments as a Sumerian tavern, a medieval English alehouse, a frontier saloon, and a speakeasy.

Alcohol bans were attempted in many times and places – notably China and pre-Columbian Mesoamerica – but they never succeed as intended. The prohibition of alcohol in Russia (!) enacted by Nicholas II in 1914 might have done more to bring down the Empire (both from resentment and loss of revenue) than anything the Germans did in the field. The bizarre American era of Prohibition also gets its due mention in the book, as does the complicated response to alcohol in different Islamic countries.

Just as a side note (not mentioned by Forsyth), the 45 US Presidents (if you don’t count the 8 under the Articles of Confederation but do count Grover Cleveland twice according to convention) were for the most part a bibulous bunch. A few including Lincoln, Taft, and Carter were very light drinkers. A few including Jackson, Pierce (who died of cirrhosis), Harding, and Lyndon Johnson were hard drinkers. Truman started the day with a shot of bourbon. (So did my paternal grandfather as it happens.) The only teetotalers were Fillmore, Hayes, GW Bush, and Trump. Fillmore and Bush, however, drank heartily in their younger days. It is not clear there is any correlation between consumption levels and successful presidencies.

Dionysus retains his dark side, of course; alcohol abuse can be devastating to oneself and others. Yet, Dionysus, Hathor, and Ankasi aren’t going anywhere. Historically, respectable drunkenness has been a social affair to honor the gods, celebrate public events, or engage in bonding with friends. Solitary drunkenness on the other hand generally has been regarded with suspicion. As bars, pubs, and nightclubs shut down for the duration of the Covid-19 outbreak there is likely to be much more suspicious behavior. Unlike the buying frenzy one sees in aisles with toilet paper and cleaning products, however, the aisles in liquor stores so far seem calm. We’ll see if that changes as the shutdown drags on. 

George Thorogood and the  Destroyers – I Drink Alone