Drinking is central to civilisation...

Alcohol - wine, beer, cider - has been part of human life since before written records began. More than anything else it is the lubricant of society, the cause of conviviality and the begetter of truth. It's also the likely reason we're civilised:

For a long time, humans traveled often and foraged for food, rather than growing it. And that worked pretty well, so anthropologists have long puzzled over why people started settling in a single spot. One benefit to nesting: growing grapes and grains, and staying in a place long enough to brew beverages for weeks or months, as beer and wine require. "Some posit this as the reason that civilization began in villages surrounded by golden fields of barley and rows of grapevines on the hills," Money writes.

And that natural fermentation process, the divine blessing of yeast, made possible those other things central to the pleasures of our lives: bread, chocolate, coffee. Drinking really is central to human civilisation - taking it away, prohibiting its blessings is a terrible, terrible sin.

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