Human Ancestors Were Consuming Alcohol 10 Million Years Ago

Discover 'blogs ^ | December 1, 2014 | Carl Engelking

[SunkenCiv]

Using the tools of paleogenetics, scientists have recently traced the evolutionary history of an enzyme that helps us metabolize ethanol, the principal type of alcohol found in adult beverages. Scientists believe early human ancestors evolved their ethanol-digesting ability about 10 million years ago to fortify their diet as they shifted from a tree-based lifestyle to a more ground-based lifestyle...

To help narrow that range, researchers studied the genetic evolution of alcohol-metabolizing enzyme ADH4, which has been present in primates, in one form or another, for at least 70 million years. Using genetic sequences from 28 different mammals, including 17 primates, the researchers were able to work backward and create a sort of family tree for ADH4.

To see how the past versions would have worked, researchers then synthesized nine different ADH4 proteins and tested their ethanol-busting properties.

Nearly all of the ADH4 enzymes from our primate ancestors were inactive -- meaning they didn't break down ethanol. However, about 10 million years ago, when orangutans and human ancestors diverged, things changed dramatically. A single amino acid alteration made ADH4 able to metabolize ethanol 40 times better than before.

[SunkenCiv]

CandyBox Images/Shutterstock

[SunkenCiv]

They got drunk and fell out of the trees.

[kjam22]

The people coming up with all this craziness are always in someway paid by our tax dollars. That’s the really bad part about these dumb articles.

[freedumb2003]

Not liking that scientific research, eh?

You do know we need to know these kinds of things for innumerable reasons.

[Twotone]

Yea, but when did they figure out how to make bourbon?

[RedStateRocker]

Doesn’t everyone? :-)

[kjam22]

According to the article man developed through evolution the ability to digest alcohol somewhere between 9000 years ago and 10 million years ago. Depends on who you ask.... I’m not sure either camp has a real clue.

[RedStateRocker]

“Don’t drink and drive. You might hit a bump and spill it”
-Dean Martin

[RedMDer]

Perhaps the first photograph of men drinking beer, circa 1844 in Scotland, by Hill & Adamson.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_beer#mediaviewer/File:Edinburgh_Ale_by_Hill_%26_Adamson_c1844.png

Aye, the beer wench is worth the price of this bitter ale.

[Veto!]

It’s certainly been a long morning after.

[Gen.Blather]

“According to the article man developed through evolution the ability to digest alcohol somewhere between 9000 years ago and 10 million years ago. “

Alcohol, like cocaine, works because your body already makes it. In the case of alcohol, it performs two natural functions. It makes our alimentary canal MUCH more efficient, which means we can carry less gut, making us leaner, maneuverable and relatively fast. The other thing it does is work as a signal telling the body, if you have extra calories, store them in the front of the abdomen. (Really, it’s that specific.) We have learned to call this area the beer gut.

[left that other site]

I’ll drink to that!

[SgtHooper]

All they had to do was eat overripe berries, like birds have done for millennia.

[workerbee]

Amazing photo.

Those little glasses of beer look SO SMALL — did that represent a standard drink served, back in the day?

[mountainlion]

This is the same timeframe that they started making up global warming stories and tried to get others to pay their way.

[freedumb2003]

That is not what it says.

You have to read past the intro.

[Fred Nerks]

One more for the road?

[Regulator]

Great pic. They’re having a good time!

[kjam22]

As a matter of fact it is what it says. According to the article.... there are two theories to when people developed the ability to digest alcohol. And they are millions of years apart.

[RedMDer]

From the picture link:

The skills involved in producing calotypes were not only of a technical nature. Hill’s sociability, humour and his capacity to gauge the sitters’ characters all played a crucial part in his photography. He is shown here on the right, apparently sharing a drink and a joke with James Ballantine and Dr George Bell. Bell, in the middle, was one of the commissioners of the Poor Law of 1845, which reformed poor relief in Scotland, and author of Day and night in the wynds of Edinburgh[2]. Ballantine was a writer and stained-glass artist, and the son of an Edinburgh brewer. On the table we see a beer bottle and three 19th-century drinking glasses called “ale flutes”. One contemporary account describes a popular Edinburgh ale (Younger's) as "a potent fluid, which almost glued the lips of the drinker together, and of which few, therefore, could dispatch more than a bottle."[3]