So Australopithecus Walks into a Fruit Grove...

Hishtory

Thirst. The physiological drive to drink liquid. It’s deadlier than hunger. You can survive without food for three weeks. But, without liquid sustenance, even in ideal conditions, you’d be hard pressed to make it a week before your body began to shut down. Of course, the most abundant liquid in our world is water. Some species of animals and plants are made up of almost 95% water. We humans are only 68%, but every living thing we know is at least 60% H2O. So- thirst. Other than breathing, it is the strongest compulsion that we have; more than hunger, more than sex… well, usually more than sex, at least in normal people. Another urge that most species of fauna seem to share is the pursuit of altered consciousness. Grazing herd animals in North America seek out Jimson Weed- what is more commonly called Locoweed. Reindeer and caribou are known to forage for mushrooms and fungi in the boreal forests of Canada, and Scandinavia in a pursuit of psychotropic trips- Maybe that’s how Santa Claus gets them to fly. And let’s not forget our household tabby cat, which if allowed to, would stay so looped on catnip that it might skip eating altogether. But, the preferred substance to get messed up on by most species, from elephants, to birds, to snails, and man, is alcohol. We humans have perfected the intersection of these two instinctual desires of thirst and getting drunk. We generally think of History, that is History with the capitol H, as one big monolithic thing; all of the activities of human beings since the beginning of man’s recordation of events. Sometimes we divide the history of mankind into, say the history of a race of people, or a culture or civilization or a society, or of a piece of land. But, as the philosopher of science, Karl Popper noted, “There is really no history of mankind, there are only the many histories of all kinds of aspects of human life.” And the one aspect of human life that has been with us since before we even started to write down our history is - alcohol.