Pat > "It's easy to imagine our paleo ancestors having a bit of fun with
the local psychotropic vegetation and fungi, but it's also easy to imagine
paleo wine sort of inventing itself.  STEP #1: leave a pile of forgotten
berries sitting in a container in warm weather; STEP #2: notice the drunken
wasps staggering around on the ground; STEP #3: courageously take a sip,
savor its fruity yet saucy bouquet, and eagerly take another sip......"

While that is very easy to imagine, I'll agree, I think the standard needs
to be that our ancestors were drinking alcoholic concoctions as part of the
entire species' regular diet for, say, 250,000 years (or 500,000 years or
whatever time period necessary to adapt to the new foodstuff).  It is not
sufficient that this group or that accidentally tried it a few times,
relatively speaking.


Jim Swayze