evidence of a connection. They caught wasps from colonies in Italy and analyzed their insides. Among 393 distinct kinds of yeast, the bakerâs variety stood out. The other yeasts waxed and waned during the course of the year, but bakerâs yeast was always present. It survived the cold by riding out winters in the guts of the fertilized queens. When young wasps departed their hives in the spring to form new colonies, bakerâs yeast went with them. In fact, the wasps are part of a global yeast transportation network; DNA evidence linked bakerâs yeast at Italian vineyards to many places in Italy and beyond: breweries, palm winemakers, and bread ovens as far away as Africa.
This means that Homo sapiens was hardly the first species to encounter the products of fermentation. Nature has its own version of the alcoholic beverage, made by the action of bakerâs and other types of yeast on ripening fruits. The bud of Eugeissona tristis , the bertam palm, found in the West Malaysian rain forest, exudes a nectar containing as much alcohol as a craft-brewed ale. The ripening process marbles the treeâs green fruits with bright colors and turns its pulp sweet; yeast ferments the sugars. Alcohol plumes are chemical Sherpas, carrying scents far and wide, attracting insects that assistwith pollination, as well as shrews and slow lorises that spread the treeâs seeds.
In Panama, howler monkeys habitually tempt fate by eating alcohol-laden palm fruit and drunkenly swinging through the trees. Biologist Robert Dudley tracked these monkey benders on a preserve on Barro Colorado Island in the Panama Canal. One monkey climbed up a thirty-foot palm and then leaped to another to grab the bright orange fruits clustered near its top. He sniffed each carefully. In twenty minutes, he had imbibed fruit infused with the alcohol content of two bottles of wine. And the more he ate, the more reckless his maneuverings through the branches became. Yet he didnât fall.
But it seemed to Dudley that the monkeys werenât just out to get hammered. They were discerning tastemakers, sampling different fruits to find just the right degree of ripeness, the tastiest balance between the sweetness of the sugars and the pungency of the alcohol, as if at a wine tasting. Drinking alcohol is something that primates have always done, Dudley suggested. He called this âthe drunken monkey hypothesisâ: a certain amount of alcohol in the diet is normal, and shaped human brains and metabolisms. (Like the ills caused by eating and drinking too much sugar, alcoholism seems to be an unfortunate effect of civilization producing too much of something the human body evolved to tolerate only in limited amounts.)
Early humans left the rain forests to trek across savannas and through mountain passes, ultimately occupying many places that lacked ripening palm buds. But there were other opportunities to encounter alcohol. Patrick McGovern, an anthropologist at the University of Pennsylvania, believes early beverages developed out of a series of accidents. A beehive loosens and falls from a tree in a rainstorm. Yeasts swimming in the water and honey go to work, fermenting the mixture to mead in a matter of days. Honey + water + time is a simple recipe that humans would have noted, remembered, and shared. Gatherers might have harvested honeycombs, set them in hollowed rocks, and doused them with water, then left them in the sun.
At some point, people began to keep food in hollowed gourds, an invention that allowed a foodstuffâs evolution from fresh to spoiled to be observed and tested. Human control of fermentation grew out of the ceaseless, and mostly losing, war on rot. When wild grapes were stored in gourds, some were crushed, breaking their skin and releasing sugary juice into the embrace of hungry yeasts. It frothed and bubbled. After a few days, it would become a pulpy, lightly alcoholic wine, tasty for only a short while before it
This means that Homo sapiens was hardly the first species to encounter the products of fermentation. Nature has its own version of the alcoholic beverage, made by the action of bakerâs and other types of yeast on ripening fruits. The bud of Eugeissona tristis , the bertam palm, found in the West Malaysian rain forest, exudes a nectar containing as much alcohol as a craft-brewed ale. The ripening process marbles the treeâs green fruits with bright colors and turns its pulp sweet; yeast ferments the sugars. Alcohol plumes are chemical Sherpas, carrying scents far and wide, attracting insects that assistwith pollination, as well as shrews and slow lorises that spread the treeâs seeds.
In Panama, howler monkeys habitually tempt fate by eating alcohol-laden palm fruit and drunkenly swinging through the trees. Biologist Robert Dudley tracked these monkey benders on a preserve on Barro Colorado Island in the Panama Canal. One monkey climbed up a thirty-foot palm and then leaped to another to grab the bright orange fruits clustered near its top. He sniffed each carefully. In twenty minutes, he had imbibed fruit infused with the alcohol content of two bottles of wine. And the more he ate, the more reckless his maneuverings through the branches became. Yet he didnât fall.
But it seemed to Dudley that the monkeys werenât just out to get hammered. They were discerning tastemakers, sampling different fruits to find just the right degree of ripeness, the tastiest balance between the sweetness of the sugars and the pungency of the alcohol, as if at a wine tasting. Drinking alcohol is something that primates have always done, Dudley suggested. He called this âthe drunken monkey hypothesisâ: a certain amount of alcohol in the diet is normal, and shaped human brains and metabolisms. (Like the ills caused by eating and drinking too much sugar, alcoholism seems to be an unfortunate effect of civilization producing too much of something the human body evolved to tolerate only in limited amounts.)
Early humans left the rain forests to trek across savannas and through mountain passes, ultimately occupying many places that lacked ripening palm buds. But there were other opportunities to encounter alcohol. Patrick McGovern, an anthropologist at the University of Pennsylvania, believes early beverages developed out of a series of accidents. A beehive loosens and falls from a tree in a rainstorm. Yeasts swimming in the water and honey go to work, fermenting the mixture to mead in a matter of days. Honey + water + time is a simple recipe that humans would have noted, remembered, and shared. Gatherers might have harvested honeycombs, set them in hollowed rocks, and doused them with water, then left them in the sun.
At some point, people began to keep food in hollowed gourds, an invention that allowed a foodstuffâs evolution from fresh to spoiled to be observed and tested. Human control of fermentation grew out of the ceaseless, and mostly losing, war on rot. When wild grapes were stored in gourds, some were crushed, breaking their skin and releasing sugary juice into the embrace of hungry yeasts. It frothed and bubbled. After a few days, it would become a pulpy, lightly alcoholic wine, tasty for only a short while before it
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