sullster

A thought has occurred to me and I thought I would bring it here for the masters. On the news recently were the results of a study which claimed that people who drink 2-3 alcoholic beverages a day suffer less dimentia. I recalled other studies which claimed that drinkers have lower incidences of heart disease and are less likely to have a fatal heart attack. I also recalled that if alcoholic beverages are consumed where water is contaminated, there is less infectious disease.

Alright, I know full well that alcohol, when consumed to excess causes a lot of problems. Yet, consumed in moderation it has many health benefits. Is there a natural selection reason for this? Fermented drinks have been with humans for thousands of years. Could alcohol have conferred a selective advantage and thus explain its use beyond the sensations it produces? Is alcohol use only explained by how neurons are affected or are we here now because our ancestors had a pop or two?

theyeti

Don't forget sexual selection. Who knows how many children were conceived under the influence of alcohol? Its behavioral affects can be "beneficial" in other ways too. The army of Alexander the Great used to get drunk before battle to increase their courage. And they used to get drunk after battle, and in between battles, and then have lots of sex...

One thing that's interesting is that excess alcohol consumption is primarily a feature of Westren civilization, and it makes you wonder if it had something to do with the eventual domination of the West. Alcohol doesn't seem to jibe well with a lot of other groups. Native Americans are highly prone to alcoholism, and the introduction of alcohol had a devastating effect on their culture. Many Asians can't drink alcohol at all. As many as one quarter of them have a defective (mabey beneficial?) aldehyde dehydrogenase that can't convert acetaldehyde (the immediate product of ethanol that gets you intoxicated) into acetic acid, which is basically just food. These people get sick if they try to drink.

As for alcohol's health benefits, sure, it's possible that these were selected for. But many of these benefits don't manifest themselves until later in life, and until quite recently people died much eariler due to other factors. Infectious disease may be an exception, if alcohol does have an effect on it.

theyeti

tronvillain

A taste for alcohol evolved long before humans did.

x-member

Did it help us survive? I don't know.. But it sure helps us cope.

Jon

CodeMason

What the more important, fundamental, question is here; how did a sense of fun help us survive? And of course fun is not limited to humans at all, most mammals (and even birds - hey, the african parrot is extremely smart) seem to have an affinity for it.

cricket

Genome by Matt Ridley discusses the role of alcohol in man's survival. His speculation is that alcohol did play a role, especially in Europe's history. And also in other agricultural areas where there was a stable population as well as population density (relatively speaking; pops wouldn't be dense by today's standards, but we're talking about 500-3000 years ago).

It had to do with the purifying effects of the alcohol. Ridley says the dysentery casualties must have been enormous during the first couple thousand years of us settling into agricultural societies.

Alcohol in fermented beverages killed some of the parasites etc that would otherwise have killed people. There were people who weren't helped by this 'strategy', but they died, leaving no descendents.... hence shaping the forces of natural selection through their death.

The ones remaining were those for whom alcohol enhanced survival rate. Their use of fermented beverages circumvented whatever god-awful shit was in the water.

Incidently, NONE of this is true for those descended from hunter-gatherer tribes. There was no selection pressure relating to alcohol consumption; they didn't need it. The hunter-gatherer tribes didn't have the same problems as ancient city-dwellers. These nomadic tribes weren't living in dense population areas with the dysentery/diseases caused by terribly impure water sources.

Nowadays, people of hunter-gatherer heritage may have particular difficulty "handling their liquor" -- because their ancestors were never exposed to this selection pressure. Therefore Native Americans, Aborigines, and other descendents of nomadic peoples are often poorly equipped to deal with alcohol.

By contrast, agricultural societies' members who were poorly equipped to deal with alcohol DIED hundreds or thousands of years ago. The ones left standing were the ones who survived by drinking fermented beverages, or the ones whose ancestors survived by doing so.

This is a fascinating book, btw.

Read it.

<she commands>

[ January 31, 2002: Message edited by: cricket ]</p>

theyeti

I didn't think about this; that's a very good point. I also thing that fermenting grains or grapes was an excellent way to store excess harvests in a form that was nutritious, calorie ladden, and wouldn't go bad as long as it wasn't allowed to oxidize. This probably allowed argicultural societies to prevent famine and to maximize the resources drawn from their harvests.

theyeti

jess

cricket- good one.

I would like to add a snide comment that 'obviously' drinking while pregnant wasn't that dangerous, since all of our ancestors did it...

The boiling of water to get it up to brewing temps also played a part in the killing of the nasty stuff---

And the fact that the final product would last for decades rather than days meant a survival factor in the long run--- as was pointed out.

Yeast is one of the civilizators of man--- without it we would have no beer, wine or bread: the staffs (staves?) of live before canning and refrigeration.

cricket

It must have been a reasonable choice to make, considering the alternative.

Pantera

Another exception is people if Chinese descent, about 50% of whom lack the gene to make the alcohol dehydrogenase enzyme IIRC. This may well be because their culture came up with a different way of sterilising water - rather than fermenting it they made tea, boiling it in the process.

[ January 29, 2002: Message edited by: Pantera ]</p>