Research usually focuses on health risks but evidence now suggests that alcohol had a crucial part to play in our evolution

Archaeologists made an intriguing discovery recently at the neolithic site of Göbekli Tepe in southern Turkey. They uncovered a series of giant stone troughs erected more than 10,000 years ago. And at the bottom of these huge vessels, they found traces of a chemical called calcium oxalate, typically produced during the soaking, mashing and fermenting of grain. It’s a by-product of brewing, in other words.

From this evidence, researchers conclude that Göbekli Tepe was a vast festival site where Stone Age men and women came to feast and to drink beer by the trough-load. Humans have known how to party for a very long time, it would seem. In fact, our love of alcohol can be traced even further into the past, according to scientists who now believe that social drinking played a key role in our evolution as we developed into big-brained, social primates.

It is a theory that will form the core of a major conference at the British Academy next week, Alcohol and Humans: A Long and Social Affair. Delegates will argue that our love of alcohol is deep-rooted and that drink – although harmful in excess – still has a role to play in generating happiness and wellbeing, as the broadcaster Adrian Chiles maintained in his TV film, Drinkers Like Me, last week.

“Studies clearly show that there are social and wellbeing benefits to be derived directly from drinking alcohol, especially in relaxed social environments,” said the evolutionary biologist Professor Robin Dunbar of Oxford University. “That is why the practice has persisted for so long.”

Dunbar, a fellow of the British Academy and one of the conference’s organisers, argues that our hunter-gatherer ancestors began to hold feasts at least 400,000 years ago after they learned how to use and control fire. Dinners round firesides helped us to cement relationships as fellow tribesfolk exchanged food, stories and gossip. Alcohol may not have been present at first but could still have become a key factor of feasts fairly quickly, and certainly long before the Neolithic arrived and we began to make brewing troughs.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Göbekli Tepe in southern Turkey was the scene of Stone Age feasting and drinking. Photograph: xefstock/Getty Images/iStockphoto

“Archaic humans may have been very familiar with naturally fermented fruits and may well have consumed them avidly – much as chimpanzees and elephants do in Africa,” said Dunbar.

The crucial point is that all these activities – relating stories, exchanging gossip, telling jokes and singing – trigger the production of endorphins in the brain, he said. “Endorphins in turn generate a positive feeling in a person, similar to that of morphine. So we feel good. And crucially, alcohol also activates the endorphin system, which in itself will enhance social bonds among those who indulge together.”

In other words, alcohol was vital in helping to strengthen social bonding and break down inhibitions – and has done so since the early days of human evolution. Certainly, we had long mastered the art of making the stuff before we made those first stone troughs and pottery vessels 10,000 years ago. It continued to have a considerable influence on our history, however. Take the example of farming. It was once assumed we turned to agriculture and the growing of fields of wheat in order to make bread and so provide reliable sustenance for ourselves. Yet the kind of wheat grown then – known as einkorn – would have made a very poor bread, say researchers. But it would have made excellent beer.

“This leads to the great theory of human history: that we didn’t start farming because we wanted food – there was loads of food around,” says Mark Forsyth, in his book A Short History of Drunkenness. “We started farming because we wanted to booze.”

This idea is backed by others, including Dunbar, who believe beer-making was the initial attraction in turning ourselves from hunter-gatherers into farmers. And, ever since, alcohol has made its mark on our lives, from lubricating parties to complex state rituals.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Customers drinking, dancing and smoking in a country tavern in early 19th-century America. Photograph: Library of Congress/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images

“By the 17th century, after the [English] civil war, drinking had become a critically important social act,” said the historian Angela McShane, of the Wellcome Trust, who will also speak at the conference. “It was a way of demonstrating your loyalty to the state in terms of the toasts that you were expected to make. If you got them wrong, you could be killed.

“To not drink not only suggested that you were not much fun to be with but that you were dangerous or seditious, because you would not toast your allegiance. That attitude became so embedded in our culture that, even today, there is a feeling among some people that they don’t quite trust someone who does not drink.”

In our own day, excess alcoholic intake has been linked to a host of health problems, from increased risks of contracting liver disease and cancers to suffering serious accidents. As a result of medical campaigns, average intakes have declined from an annual high of 9.5 litres of alcohol per head in 2004 to 7.8 litres in 2015.

But McShane pointed out that there was no set medical opinion about whether or not alcohol was good for you. “Some doctors will say that whatever amount you drink, it will have an adverse impact on your body. But that is true of tea, coffee or even water. What we should also realise is that alcohol is a lubricant that can smooth the running of society.”

Dunbar agrees. He pointed to one analysis of 148 epidemiological studies of heart attack patients, which was then used to isolate what factors best predicted a patient’s survival 12 months after a heart attack. “The most important turned out to be the quality of their relationships with others,” he said. “Giving up smoking, obesity and exercise were less important than the number of good friends you had. In other words, our social networks play a central role in our ability to survive the worst traumas that life can throw at us. And those networks are very clearly enhanced by the use of alcohol.”

Other studies conducted by Dunbar show that those who regularly visit their local pub for moderate drinking tend to be more socially engaged, feel more contented and are more likely to trust other members of their community than those who do not drink at all.

“Most research that is carried out on alcohol and humans has concentrated on its excessive use – its abuse – by men and women,” said Dunbar. “Moderate social drinking has been ignored as subject of study until relatively recently. These latest studies suggest that the impact of moderate alcoholic intake is surprisingly beneficial.”

First fires and feasts

Evidence suggests our ancestors, Homo erectus, used and controlled fire at least 400,000 years ago, enabling the first fireside feasts.

Early drinkers

Brewing can be traced to the Middle East 10,000 years ago, while wine production began 8,000 years ago in Georgia.

The Right Stuff

Ancient Romans believed that wine was a medicine and soldiers were required to drink a litre a day.

Prohibition

The US outlawed the production and sale of alcohol in 1920 and repealed the ban in 1933.

One for the road

The first alcohol in space was a small flask of communion wine carried on Apollo 11 by Buzz Aldrin in 1969.