May 10, 2017.
When did man discover alcohol? A scientist answers this question in a recent study, and the answer is about 10 million years old.
Surviving alcohol has become a matter of survival
Man and alcohol have a history as old as the world. In any case, this is what suggests a very serious scientific study which was carried out by the geneticist Matthew Carrigan, of Santa Fe College in Gainsville, in the United States. According to this study, taken up by the magazine Science and the Future, this story would have started ten million years ago, when a genetic mutation allowed humans to metabolize ethanol much faster, to ensure their survival.
In remarks taken up by Science and the Future, the researcher explains in fact that this mutation occurred when the primates, ancestors of man, who lived in trees, had to adapt their way of feeding to drought. They then descended more frequently from the trees which had hitherto provided them with their needs, to collect the fruits that had already fallen. Gold many of them had already started to ferment and it was at this point that the first contact of the man-to-be with alcohol occurred..
Alcohol quickly became essential for humans
Their body then quickly had to adapt to this new substance., recalls the researcher, because the state of intoxication was, for these primates, synonymous with danger of death. ” Drunk, tumbling down from trees or dozing off in an environment where predators were prowling would have been fatal to them », Notes Matthew Carrigan.
This is not the first study to look at the history of humans with alcohol, and in 2004 biologist Robert Dudley provided evidence that men very early on researched the effects of alcohol on the body and on mood. A theory supplemented by Matthew Carrigan who affirms that once alcohol was discovered, men quickly appreciated its many functions and in particular its role in slowing down metabolism and storing fat.
Sybille Latour
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