Plato, Socrates, and many other philosophers would often drink wine socially and as an intellectual exercise prior to getting the assemblies together to discuss moral and political issues. Wine rose in popularity in ancient Greece around 350 B.C. Evidence of wine production and drinking was also discovered in this area from around 3000 B.C., but in this region, beer remained the beverage of choice, being featured in temple rituals and carvings for more than 2000 years. Still, it’s been theorized that beer-drinking actually preceded the eating of bread as a staple part of the human diet. There are also stamps on Mesopotamian clay vessels that share similarities to this first beer-brewing guide that date back to earlier than that (around 4000 B.C.), so it actually may be even older than that, but there isn’t really enough hard evidence to prove it.
and was a guide carved in Sumerian describing how to brew beer. The first written evidence of alcoholic beverages comes from around 3200 B.C. But we do know which brew was first: Beer. Although the first human encounter with alcohol has been lost to pre-recorded time, historians say that we probably created it by accident and that early humans eventually learned how to control the fermentation process and develop it. History of AlcoholĮven though alcohol has only been known as “alcohol” for roughly 160 years or so, that hasn’t stopped our ancestors from using it. Soon after that, this definition was further defined as “the intoxicating element in fermented liquors.” Finally, in 1850, the term was extended to encompass all fermented liquors and similar compounds, and the rest, as they say, is less-than-sober history. The first appearance of a modern definition of alcohol wasn’t recorded until 1753 and was an abbreviation of the term “alcohol of wine,” which meant (as you might have guessed) the pure stuff that made wine fun to drink. In 1540, the earliest English definition of alcohol was “powdered cosmetic.” During the 1670s, this definition was broadened to “the pure spirit of anything,” which now would include liquids. This word made its way into medieval Latin as “alcohol” and described “powdered ore of antimony.” Antimony was a brittle silver metal that was one of the few metals you could find in a pure state in nature. First seen during the medieval era, the word “alcohol” comes from an Arabic word “kahala” which originally meant “to stain” or to “paint.” This word was eventually associated with another Arabic word “al-kuhul,” which was a word that described a cosmetic powder designed to darken your eyelids. Benzodiazepines For Anxiety – The Potential For AbuseĪlcohol, the starter of fun nights and achy mornings, has been around causing trouble for thousands of years, but the word “alcohol” is relatively new.