The Christmas holidays, while being a time to spend with your loved ones, is also an opportunity for the indulgence of food and drink- including alcohol. With two-thirds of drinkers in the UK claiming they over-indulge on alcohol over the festive season and men admitting to consuming around 14 units on Christmas day, it's safe to say that the UK population enjoys their alcohol more excessively over the holiday season. Due to this increase in consumption of alcohol every Christmas and New Year, I thought it would be fitting to research the origins of alcohol and find out how it has become so paramount to many adults' celebrations.

 

The basic belief of how alcohol substances were first ingested is linked to chimpanzees. It is most likely that they discovered overripe plums that had been split open, they were drawn to the intoxicating fruity odor and gorged themselves on these fruits. Consequently, these chimpanzees would've begun to experience some unusual effects. These unknowing apes have accidentally stumbled onto a process that would later be harnessed by humans to create beer, wine, and other alcoholic drinks. The sugars in these overripe fruits attract microscopic organisms known as yeasts- as these yeasts feed on the fruit sugars, they produce a compound called ethanol. Ethanol is the type of alcohol found in alcoholic beverages today; this process is called fermentation. The exact point at which humans began to create fermented beverages is unknown, however, there is evidence that dates back to 7,000 BCE in China- residue in clay pots revealed that people were making alcoholic beverages from fermented rice, millet, grapes, and honey. Within a few thousand years, cultures all over the world were fermenting their own drinks: Ancient Mesopotamians and Egyptians made beer throughout the year from stored cereal grains that were available to people of all classes. They also made wine; grapes were difficult to grow due to the climate and therefore wine was an expensive delicacy. On the other hand, grapes grew more easily in places like Greece and Rome and wine was as common as beer was in Egypt and Mesopotamia.

 

Yeasts will ferment almost all plant sugars; ancient people would make alcohol from whatever crops and plants were available to them where they lived and soon almost every region of the globe had its own fermented drinks. As a result of this, alcohol consumption quickly became a very casual part of everyday life and some authorities believed alcohol had almost healing effects: Greek physicians considered wine to be good for health, and poets testified to its creative qualities. Despite this, others were more concerned about alcohol's potential for abuse; early Christian and Jewish writers introduced wine into rituals but believed excessive intoxication was a sin. Furthermore, an Islamic rule on not praying while intoxicated solidified into a general ban on alcohol.

 

Ancient, fermented drinks usually had low alcohol content at about 14% alcohol, this is because the by-products wild yeasts generate during fermentation become toxic and kill them, fermentation therefore stops, and the alcohol content levels off. So, the alcohol content in fermented beverages was limited for many years, that was until the process of distillation was invented, allowing humans to capture evaporated alcohol and cool it down to leave liquid alcohol much more concentrates than any fermented beverage. This was used to make alcoholic spirits.

 

By the 1600s, alcohol had gone from simply giving chimpanzees a buzz to fuelling global trade and exploration, and as time went on, alcohol's role in human society would only grow more complicated. So, now I, and hopefully you, understand further how this globally consumed substance came to be.