The greatest invention of all is... booze???

 

That's the suggestion of Alec Marsh, writing at Spiked Online.

The oldest brewery ever discovered – by archaeologists, in a cave near Haifa, Israel back in 2018 – is an astonishing 13,000 years old. That’s how long the bar has been open for. For context, 13,000 years ago there were still sabre-toothed tigers roaming around Britain and Stonehenge hadn’t been built yet. In fact, it wasn’t going to be built for another 8,000 years.

The chances are that this particular brewery wasn’t even the first one in the world. It’s just the oldest one we’ve found so far. In any event, it means that we have been drinking for longer than we have been farming – the invention of which is dated to about 12,000 years ago. For some humans, finding a drink has always taken priority over having a meal.

It’s almost comforting to think of our forebears, sitting huddled in furs in caves with the comparatively new innovation of fire to keep them warm, while also having a small beaker of ale to get them through the night. It seems that they, too, might have found solace in a beer. You can only imagine they needed it.

This is alcohol’s great gift to humanity. It doesn’t just help keep the cold out, it’s also a brief psychological off-switch from the great treadmill of life. It’s a cup of transcendence, one that comes without the need to light scented candles and squat on a mat in Lycra. It untethers the brain from the immediate and allows it to roam free.

Alcohol also brings people together – to celebrate, to commiserate, to fornicate. And sometimes to do all three at once. It’s done so for as long as we’ve been having parties, whether in caves, hovels, regency palaces, flats or suburban semis.

Many of us wouldn’t be here today but for the socially lubricating effects of alcohol. Because somewhere along the way, the introvert among your lineal ancestors would not have crossed the dancefloor without the assistance of Dutch courage.

. . .

To describe alcohol as a wonder drug is not to seek to conceal its hazards – the key word is drug, of course. It needs to be handled with care and respect. Like nuclear energy – another fantastic human innovation – it comes with dangerous trade-offs.

. . .

No one would invent alcohol now, of course. But there’s no doubt it serves us well, and it has done so since time immemorial. So let’s not damn it, but celebrate it for its enormous contribution to humanity. It’s time we raised a glass to booze.

There's more at the link.  Entertaining reading, as are many of Spiked Online's articles.  If you aren't visiting there regularly, you might want to bookmark the site.

I'm not sure I'd agree that booze is as benign as Mr. Marsh would suggest.  I've seen an awful lot of people get into an awful lot of trouble through over-indulgence in alcohol.  From military men who found themselves impaired in combat, to technical staff in the computer industry who got used to a drink or two every night to get over the stress of the day (and then found it became three, or four, or more) . . . it's a terribly easy drug to misuse, and that can have catastrophic consequences.  I know people who've lost their families, their homes, everything, because they over-indulged.

Because I could see what it was doing to people around me, I've usually been very, very careful around booze.  My wife and I enjoy a bottle of wine together over a meal, or an occasional evening glass after a long, hard-working day, but we're relatively light drinkers.  When we married, I still had a couple of bottles of the hard stuff that I'd brought with me from South Africa when I immigrated to America in 1996, fifteen years before.  We have several bottles in our collection right now that are up to a decade old, which we still haven't finished.  We spend very little on alcohol, and enjoy it now and then as a pleasantly relaxing tipple.

I do understand that for some people, alcohol is a deadly trap that's very hard for them to escape.  I'm very conscious of Gerald Manley Hopkins' warning:

... cliffs of fall ... Hold them cheap ... who ne'er hung there.

Alcohol is just as dangerous a "cliff of fall" as cigarettes or hard drugs.  Therefore, I won't "raise a glass to booze", but I'll gratefully tip my hat to whoever first discovered its useful, less harmful properties.  In moderation, it's made the world a more relaxed place for many of us.

Peter