Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization

by Edward Slingerland

Equally surprising is the central role that the production and consumption of intoxicants play in cultural life, from ancient to modern times. All over the world, wherever you find people, you find ridiculous amounts of time, wealth, and effort dedicated to the sole purpose of getting high. In ancient Sumer, it is estimated that the production of beer, a cornerstone of ritual and everyday life, sucked up almost half of overall grain production.50 A significant portion of the Incan Empire’s organized labor was directed toward the production and distribution of the corn-based intoxicant chicha.51 Even ancient dead people were obsessed with getting wasted. It is hard to find a culture that did not send off their dead with copious quantities of alcohol, cannabis, or other intoxicants. Chinese tombs from the Shang Dynasty were packed with elaborate wine vessels of every shape and size, in both pottery and bronze.52 This represented a cultural investment equivalent, in today’s terms, to burying a few brand-new Mercedes SUVs in the ground with their trunks full of vintage Burgundy.