Distillation and isolation are thes co to the twin banes of modernity. Alcoholic beverages have traditionally come with a bilton safety feature, which is that they can't get above a certain strength. But distillations awy around this natural limit of alcohol strength. And if you have alcoholic tendencies, that enhanced kick you're getting from getting a taste of something that's 80, 90 % a b v is really dangerous as well.
Do we have alcohol to thank for civilization? The answer, according to Edward Slingerland’s new book, “Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization,” is a resounding yes. Edward, who’s a professor at the University of British Columbia and self-proclaimed “philosophical hedonist,” says that far from being an evolutionary fluke, our taste for alcohol is an evolutionary advantage — one that we’ve relied on for millennia to help us lead more social, creative, and pleasurable lives.