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Slingerland,a cultural polymath of great insight and refreshing honesty,is not advocating that the human race would be better off with “a keg on every corner”,as various Australian thinkers have insisted over the years. His thesis is born of a cause-and-effect debate that has been running through the academic view of pre-history for decades and heating up of late. “Beer before bread” or “bread before beer”?

One of Slingerland’s early shouts is this:“Archaeologists have begun to suggest that various forms of alcohol were not merely a by-product of the invention of agriculture,but actually a motivation for it – that the first farmers were driven by a desire for beer,not bread.”

This is a not insignificant re-think of our “Fertile Crescent” schoolbook view of the origins of organised agriculture,and consequent development of village,then urban life. Sure,there were urbanisations that emerged from concentrations of people creating grain,but it is intriguing to think that they were growing grain to ferment it in bulk,and that the extra food was supplementing an already existing hunter-gatherer nutritional base.

Slingerland argues (while referencing the work of many others,including mind-manipulation advocates William James and Aldous Huxley),that the human brain,while an instrument of colossal complexity and capability,is inherently driven to alter its perception of itself.

Whether this be by religion,dance or ritual,pharmacy is by and large the universal springboard for the high dive. And while alcohol is not the exclusive go-to mind-modifying molecule (mushrooms,peyote,kava – the list is long and growing,in labs,legit or otherwise),it remains the Esperanto of intoxication.

And it is this universal obsession with the stuff that Slingerland insists is also the glue that held early societies together,creating a sense of camaraderie,cooperation and the exchange of ideas.

In discussing the countless rituals that surround the consumption of booze in just about every culture,ancient and modern,he writes that “intoxicants have accrued enormous symbolic meaning because theyintoxicate us. It is precisely the psycho-pharmacological efficacy of alcohol that allowed it to catalyse the rise of massive civilisations. In light of this,it’s no surprise that cultures around the world quickly came to imbue alcohol … with symbolic importance. Before civilisation,intoxication.”

Some will find this a bit of a stretch – a bunch of hominids getting off their faces laying the foundations of the pyramids and Greek philosophy – but Slingerland makes a convincing case for the deep significance of brain-bending beverages,not only in the formation of the first settled urban environments,but also in our ability to tolerate living within them.

He concedes that drinking and its consequences are not all sweetness and light. Everything from liver damage,sexual assaults,drunken brawls and car accidents are just some of the downsides of excessive consumption of ethyl alcohol he acknowledges.

He attributes the worst of the damage we see today as result of the invention of distillation,and the consequent appearance of hard liquor such as gin and whisky. But he also points out that these poisons have been readily available only for the past 500 years or so,which may seem a long time,but the blink of an eye since the days of the first Mesopotamian beer parties.

But cautionary notes aside,he makes a convincing plea for de-demonising the demon drink.

“While it is socially acceptable to talk in purely aesthetic terms about our interest in fine wine,microbrewed beer or designer cannabis,we remain uncomfortable talking about our need for embodied pleasure for its own sake,rather than as a side-effect of more respectable,abstract connoisseurship. This is a hang-up we need to get over.”

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