Could an Egyptian pharaoh or a Chinese emperor have used a stiff drink or two to build their kingdoms? While we don’t know the particulars of ancient leaders’ drunken deeds, there’s no question that alcohol has been a beloved staple of society for thousands of years. Some scholars have gone as far as to claim that alcohol helped establish societies — an idea known as the “drunk hypothesis."
A new study published in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications backs up the drunk hypothesis, finding a connection between alcohol and complex societies. Evidence across multiple cultures shows that alcohol in ancient times was far more than just a liquid means of letting loose.
Alcohol Across the Ancient World
The drunk hypothesis certainly has legs, if historical records are any indication. Early civilizations were known to enjoy a range of libations, such as beer, wine, and mead.
Beer was an essential drink in Dynastic Egypt, with proof of its value shown in administrative records and art within tombs. It was brewed for all to enjoy at religious feasts, but for the most part, it was a true working-class drink — laborers who worked on the Giza pyramid probably downed a few beers after a day of hard work.
Early Mediterranean societies were, unsurprisingly, partial to wine, which became a significant trade commodity across the region. However, sommeliers in ancient Greece often desired the taste of wine without the intoxicating side effects, diluting wine with water to keep a clear head.
In Bronze Age China, alcohol was used in funerary ceremonies, in which vessels filled with fermented cereal beverages were offered to ancestors in hopes of bringing wealth and power to the living.
And in the Inca Empire, alcohol seemed to be the great equalizer. Chicha — a corn-based fermented beverage — was passed around at state-sponsored feasts, uniting rulers and the common people.
Read More: When Was Beer Invented and Where Was the World’s Oldest Alcohol Made?
Poring Over Drinking Data
In the new study, researchers examined data on the consumption of fermented beverages from a global sample of 186 non-industrial societies.
“To understand the association between alcohol and cultural complexity, we used statistical models that take different possible explanations of what happened into account. These causal methods essentially helped us separate the role of alcohol from other key factors that might influence political structures, like agricultural intensity and environmental productivity,” said co-author Angela Chira, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, in a statement.
The researchers looked at societies of varying political complexity, from “acephalous” ones that lacked any centralized political authority to large states organized into multiple administrative levels. Taking information from all societies examined, they built a dataset based on the presence of low-alcoholic indigenous beverages like cereal beers and fruit wines.
How Alcohol Built Societies
The researchers found a positive relationship between fermented beverages and higher levels of political complexity, yet they noted that the relationship was weaker with the addition of agriculture as a confounder. They argue that in most cases, “alcohol production is a consequence or by-product of agriculture rather than the cause of it.”
Although fermented beverages can also be made from wild plants picked by hunter-gatherers, it was only until agriculture began that societies could “reap the benefits of alcohol on a large scale.”
Thanks to agriculture, alcohol has become deeply embedded in society in many ways. For lower classes, it helped to expand social cohesion by being an important part of feasts. Leaders, meanwhile, used it to build alliances, acquire social prestige, and motivate workers.
Alcohol has been shown to occasionally create unrest in society, but the researchers say that in ancient times, its social benefits tended to outweigh the negative effects of intoxication. So in celebration of alcohol’s storied past, raise a glass to ancient societies and their love of all things boozy!
Read More: Was the First Beer Brewed for the Dead?
Article Sources
Our writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:
Humanities and Social Sciences Communications. Did alcohol facilitate the evolution of complex societies?
Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. Predynastic beer production, distribution, and consumption at Hierakonpolis, Egypt
Heritage. The Rise of Wine among Ancient Civilizations across the Mediterranean Basin
Food Research International. Unveiling the potential of African fermented cereal-based beverages: Probiotics, functional drinks, health benefits and bioactive components
Jack Knudson is an assistant editor at Discover with a strong interest in environmental science and history. Before joining Discover in 2023, he studied journalism at the Scripps College of Communication at Ohio University and previously interned at Recycling Today magazine
