By today's Puritanical standards, alcohol is considered a vice. A widely acceptable vice, yes, but still something we're all better off avoiding in excess. Every year, its consumption is responsible for the deaths of around 88,000 people in the U.S. alone. The CDC estimates this works out to 2.5 million potential years of life lost; an average of thirty years cut short per alcohol-related death. Looking at the numbers like that, many folks (and several entire religions) wonder if maybe our species wouldn't be better off if we'd never discovered the stuff.
But evaluating alcohol's impact through the lens of evolutionary biology paints a very different picture; we might not be here at all if it weren't for the Devil's Bathwater. Today, alcohol is a drug. But ten million years ago, for some of our earliest evolutionary ancestors, the smell of fermentation was a signal that fruit was at its ripest and most calorically dense. Eons before the first brewery, our furry forebearers used alcohol as a cheat code for staying fat and happy.
Here, in an excerpt from Robert Evans' A Brief History of Vice (out 8/9), is the story of how alcohol first entered the history of the animal kingdom, long before the first hom*o sapien came onstage.
ANCIENT ALCOHOL IN THE ANIMAL KINGDOM
It's easy to imagine some starving ancient human shoveling a handful of decomposing fruit down his throat and, a few seconds later, realizing he felt f*cking excellent.But the story of humankind's introduction to alcohol actually starts much earlier, before anything remotely human ever existed.
Our ability to metabolize alcohol, and thus get drunk, originated in some of the very first primates on earth. The enzyme ADH4 is what lets us (and gorillas and monkeys) digest alcohol, and the variation of this enzyme that lets our species appreciate the ethanol in a whiskey sour first showed up around ten million years ago.
This means there have been hominids drinking much longer than there have been human beings. The obvious question is: Why did we hold on to this adaptation? The primates who first started using alcohol must've been rewarded for their ability to tolerate it and their desire to seek it out. And reward means "they had lots of drunken animal sex." A casual look at your city's main drag on a Friday night illustrates the most confusing part of this story: Drunken people aren't good at anything but starting fistfights, puking out of car windows, and having trouble with their erections.
And yet alcohol is the one drug we know our primate granddaddies and -mommies were consuming millions of years ago. So have we always loved drinking to excess? The most likely answer lies in the most aptly named theory in scientific history.
THE DRUNKEN MONKEY HYPOTHESIS
According to the this theory, there's a damn good reason our ancestors started drinking well before the evolutionary time line's equivalent of five p.m. The Drunken Monkey Hypothesis (yes,that's the real name) states that regular drinking carried substantial benefits for our adorable, furry forebears.
By the time fruit starts fermenting, it's gotten absolutely as ripe as it's going to get. Ripealso means "full of sugar" and thus full of calories.You need a lot of calories when your whole day is spent swinging from trees and fleeing from jaguars. After all, one of alcohol's most well known side effects is the beer belly: Beer and wine and liquor are all dense with calories. A regular drinking habit combined with a regular eating habit leads to a much fatter animal.
One of the great challenges for any species in the wild is simply not starving to death.When you can travel from points A to B only by walking or running and have to hunt and gather all your food, you burn a lot more fuel just staying alive. Alcohol guaranteed our ancestors more precious, life-giving calories. The telltale scent of fermentation was an easy way for them to know when a food was at its most caloric. Keeping a solid buzz was enough of an advantage that our simian great-[X]-grandparents developed noses specifically attuned to the odor of ethanol.
In evolutionary terms, the pen-tailed treeshrew is the distant uncle Mom refuses to talk about.
Scientists have even gone so far as to confirm that drinking alcohol while eating food makes you take in more calories than if you just did one after the other. Mixing booze and food is such a good survival strategy that the only monkeys who f*cked enough to pass on their genes were the ones who drank. And yes, there's hard scientific evidence to support that claim.
Frank Wiens and Annette Zitzmann, animal physiologists from the University of Bayreuth, Germany, noted in 2008 that pen-tailed treeshrews really seemed to prefer getting their calories from fermented fruit nectar than from anything else.
The telltale scent of fermentation was an easy way for our ancestors to know when a food was at its most caloric.
Pen-tailed treeshrews are significant, because in addition to looking like the result of a raccoon mating with a pear, they're considered to be the spitting image of the first preprimates, genetically speaking. And while these guys have a lot in common with our earliest ancestors, they also share something with Russian dockworkers; namely, the ability to put away nine or more drinks in a night without feeling it.The pen-tailed treeshrew lives its life like one giant bar crawl, with tree branches as its taps and fermenting palm nectar in lieu of craft beer.
That nectar, colonized by naturally occurring air yeasts, can hit three to four percent alcohol by the time a shrew starts slurping it up. Nine beers seem like more than a tiny little rat-monkey should be able to handle without being too f*cked-up to avoid danger. But the pen-tailed treeshrew takes its alcohol like a Yeltsin. The fact that the jungles of Malaysia aren't filled with drunken shews falling from the sky is proof that alcohol doesn't affect them quite the same way it affects us.
Again, scientists suspect the pen-tailed treeshrew is very close to our early primate ancestors. This suggests that our ability to enjoy alcohols intoxicating effects came afterour desire to seek out and consume it. We started our relationship with alcohol because it made us less likely to starve to death. Over time we gained the ability to stand upright and, eventually, invent Netftix. Somewhere along that timeline we also started getting drunk from alcohol, and not just fat.
Today, alcohol is the most widely consumed intoxicant on earth. We spend well over a trillion dollars a year worldwide to get our buzz on, and for more sacred purposes than mere drunkenness; Christian churches across the world use wine to represent the blood of their god.The ancient Greeks and Romans took the opposite tack, and turned their alcohol into a god, Dionysus. There's absolutely no drug on earth that our species has carried further or invested more creativity into than alcohol. And it all started with fermented palm nectar.
THE CURIOUS HISTORY OF PALM TREES AND ALCOHOL
Palm trees are almost enough to make one believe in the existence of a booze-loving god. The bertam palm, favored by the pen-tailed treeshrew, is essentially a living bar. It secretes a constant flow of nectar in to hundreds of little flowers during the month and a half when its pollen is ripening. These flowers are colonized by a special sort of yeast, which ferments the nectar. Small animals, like the treeshrew, are drawn by the smell of sugar.
Visits to the bertam-palm tavern benefit both the fuzzy little alcoholics and the tree itself. The treeshrews get open taps to binge on, and the palm gets a small, drunken army to help spread its pollen far and wide. The arrangement is dizzyingly complex: Yeasts feed off sugars in the nectar, and the brewery-like aroma draws in treeshrews, sloths, and other animals.While each bertam palm gives off nectar for only a short time each year, individual members of the species are all fertile at different times throughout the year, ensuring a regular supply of free sugar beer for the sundry lushes of Malaysia.
The bertam palm isn't the only species of palm tree with a penchant for providing hooch to primates. Phoenixdactylifera,the date palm tree, is believed to be one of humankind's earliest sources of alcohol. The syrup produced by palm trees is so high in sugar, and the plants themselves so friendly to yeast, that each plant is basically its own self-contained brewery.
Harvesting from a date palm tree.
Fermenting beer of any worthwhile strength can take two to three weeks, and usually a fair bit longer. Once tapped and exposed to the air, palm syrup can reach 4 percent alcohol by volume (ABV) in just two hours. In parts of Sri Lanka and Malaysia, a lot of "wine" is still prepared this way today. It's not uncommon for people to drink upward of a liter in a day. This palm wine is nearly always consumed within a day or so of being fermented (evidently the taste doesn't age well).
Once tapped and exposed to the air, palm syrup can reach 4 percent alcohol by volume (ABV) in just two hours.
Palm syrup is like the opposite of honey. Humans have used both to make alcoholic beverages since time immemorial. But honey takes a very long time to ferment: Most meads (honey based wines) take many months to properly prepare. Even modern quick mead, loaded with other fruits to provide the yeast with more easily fermentable sugars, takes a good six weeks to brew. Meanwhile, palm syrup turns into booze almost immediately, but gets only worse with time.
Palm trees clearly want us to get drunk, fast. On the opposite side of things, I imagine bees would be pretty pissed at us if they knew we were turning their precious honey into bad-decision fuel. But the relative difficulty of fermenting honey, and the dangers involved in acquiring it, made honey wine far more prized by ancient drinkers. Palm wine never really took off on a global scale, but you can probably stroll down the aisles of your local liquor store and find mead today.
I can't help but feel a little sad at that. We've forgotten our roots. Primates weren't introduced to the wonders and terrors of alcohol by honeybees.The bertam palm didn't exist ten million years ago, but the odds are good that something very much like the date palm tree was one of the earth's first bartenders.
And just how would its drinks have tasted? Well ...
HOW TO BREW UR-BOOZE
I am going to answer the question right now, before we get to a recipe. Ur-booze tastes f*cking awful. Unless you've got an absolutely unquenchable sweet tooth or a borderline sexual obsession with the flavor of cough syrup,you will not enjoy ur-booze. You'll struggle to finish a cup of the stuff. But if what I've described sounds good, or if you just hate your taste buds, here's what you'll need ...
INGREDIENTS
- 24 oz pure organic palm syrup
- 12 oz water (optional)
- 1packet yeast
- 1 one-gallon brew bucket and airlock
Finding palm syrup is a little easier said than done. I had hoped to use sugar from a date palm tree, since that seems to have been the first sugar-bearing palm that human beings would've hung out around. It was easy to find syrup made from dates, but not from the sap of the tree itself. Part of that has to do with the fact that countries like Bangladesh have banned the sale (or export) of date palm sap due to its tendency to get infected with horrific bat-borne illnesses.
Date palm syrup is harvested in the simplest manner imaginable: Some dude hacks a hole in a tree with a machete, and then hangs a bucket under it to collect the sap overnight. Bats come out at night, and, thanks to rampant deforestation, buckets of free sap are one of the few reliable food sources left to them. So they sup on date syrup and leave some of their own fluids behind in the process. Unfortunately for the sap lovers of the world,those fluids sometimes contain the deadly Nipah virus.
Without going into too much detail, Nipah kills the heck out of people. There's no vaccine or cure, and local governments have turned to banning palm sap rather than risk deadly outbreaks. So yeah, no date palm sap for us. Thankfully, the date palm and the bertam palm aren't the only sugariffic species of palm tree on the planet. Southeast Asia and India are home to Caryo taurens,which has a very similar and super-sugary sap that's sold as syrup in parts of Oregon and California. You can buy some yourself by Googling "Kandy Mountain."
DIRECTIONS
The goal here is to recreate the first, accidentally alcoholic sip a primate ever took. It won't pay to be fancy. Simply take your palm syrup, pour it into your brew bucket, and add the yeast. I added water to my brew, mainly to wash the extra couple of ounces of syrup out of my bottles. Kandy Mountain's stuff is expensive,and I didn't want to waste a drop.
Fermentation should start almost immediately. My batch grew a fizzy, white foamy head within a couple of hours. By that night, the airlock was bubbling like crazy. The yeast did its work gleefully. Twenty-four hours later, I poured about a half pint of ur-booze into my cup and steeled myself to try it. Even watered down it tasted thick and incredibly sweet, like a lukewarm shot of melted Skittles.
There was alcohol in it, yes, but a very mild amount, 2 to 3 percent. Drinking that half-pint made my teeth feel like I'd just chug-chewed a half-gallon of OJ mixed with scraps of aluminum foil. It was almost unbearable. Getting drunk off ur-booze would've required an act of titanic willpower. But that's not to say it lacked any positive aspects. The sugar rush was wonderful. I had my first sip late at night, at the end of a tiring day, and within a few minutes of finishing the cup I was up and about, cleaning and organizing my room at a twitchy, manic pace more reminiscent of Adderall than alcohol. (The subsequent sugar crash was as awful as you'd expect.)
I shared the ur-booze with my fiancee, Magenta. She's got a mighty sweet tooth, and I wanted to make sure this stuff wasn't disgusting just to my palate. She also found it much too sweet, and couldn't even drink enough to get that sugar high. I elected to wait and let it ferment for two more days before sharing it with a group of friends.
That didn't work, either. Out of the six people I convinced to try ur-booze, only one person thought it was palatable, comparing it to a liqueur like Kahlua. The reaction of my friend and coworker David Bell was more typical:
"I dare you to try and get drunk on this. It has the consistency of what I imagine sperm tastes like, and just a little fizziness. It's garbage."
He's almost right. Straight ur-booze is undrinkable. But there is one delicious use for the stuff, and I'd like to introduce you all to a new co*cktaiI with a very old ingredient.
THE UR-ISH COFFEE
The only test subject who liked ur-booze suggested pouring a shot of it into a cup of hot black coffee. I poured a shot's worth of ur-booze into a mug of coffee, stirred vigorously, and sipped. Now it was delicious. I don't prefer my coffee with sugar, but the ur booze added a pleasant amount of sweetness to a very bitter cup of coffee. It set off the coffee's natural flavor nicely, and while the alcohol content wasn't particularly noticeable, the surge of sugar induced energy mixed well with the caffeine.
Ur-ish coffee isn't the right drink to start your day with. Alcohol isn't an early morning thing for most people, and if you are a dawn drinker you'll get much more buzz for your buck out of a bloody Mary or a traditional Irish coffee. I recommend ur-ish coffee as an early evening drink. Break out a few mugs for you and your friends before heading out to a concert or a bar or any other weekend activity at which you plan on drinking. It gives enough energy to push you through that late-afternoon slump.
Try this recipe for yourself, mix it with coffee for palatability, and take it at the start of a long night of (responsible) drinking. Let the cloying, fizzy sweetness connect you to the first primates who started us down a long and winding road that led, millions of years later, to every glass of craft beer, wine, and fine liquor you've ever sipped.
FromA BRIEF HISTORY OF VICE: How Bad Behavior Built Civilization by Robert Evans, to be published on August 9th by Plume, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright ©2016 by Robert Evans.
