Alcohol Was Here Before Civilization and That Explains a Lot

Alcohol Was Here Before Civilization and That Explains a Lot

Alcohol feels normal because it has always been there.

Long before laws, labels, or warning signs, humans were fermenting whatever would bubble.

The earliest evidence of alcohol comes from China around 7000 BCE, where people fermented rice, honey, and fruit into a drink that likely tasted terrible but worked just fine.

Alcohol didn’t arrive as recreation. It arrived as survival.

Fermentation made liquids safer to drink than stagnant water.

It preserved calories.

It created mild intoxication that bonded communities, eased pain, and blurred the sharp edges of early life.

Beer was food. Wine was medicine. Mead was celebrated.

By the time civilization organized itself, alcohol was already baked in.

• The Sumerians wrote hymns to beer. Egyptians paid workers in it.

• The Greeks debated philosophy while drinking wine diluted with water.

• The Romans carried fermentation everywhere they conquered.

Alcohol wasn’t optional. It was infrastructure.

That history explains why alcohol still gets treated differently from other substances. It’s legal almost everywhere.

It’s advertised during football games. It shows up at weddings, funerals, promotions, and bad Tuesdays.

But biology did not evolve alongside marketing.

Alcohol is a depressant. It impacts sleep, liver function, inflammation, and mental health.

Even moderate drinking changes how the brain regulates dopamine and stress.

None of that is new. What’s new is how often and how easily we consume it.

Which is why January always brings the same question back to the surface.

Not is alcohol bad when consumed in moderations. But what role does it actually play in my life.

That’s a personal answer. Always has been.