9781422282434

12 ALCOHOL AND TOBACCO

Young people get a lot of mixed messages when it comes to alcohol. On the one hand, adults lecture them to stay away from it, while on the other hand, many adults themselves seem to make alcohol a key part of their social lives.

over time. The social history of drinking is the story of a constant push-pull between indulgence and abstention .

ANCIENT ALCOHOL

The first type of alcoholic drink made by humans was probably beer. For example, the workers and slaves who built the pyramids of Giza were given beer as part of their daily rations. Beer was also was made by Sumerians around 3200 BCE. (Sumer was in southern Mesopotamia, in modern Iraq.) Sumerians made wine about 200 years later, but evidence suggests that beer remained the more popular drink. In fact, the first recipe recorded in human history was for a type of beer. Wine was much more popular in ancient Greece, where it was a key part of people’s social lives. Ancient cultures on the Indian subcontinent