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01Part One · History

At the Origins: What Our Ancestors Drank

What our earliest ancestors drank before anything was brewed — water, blood, milk, sap and fruit — and what the evidence can and cannot say about it.

In this chapter

  • Plain Waterthe water holes of Olduvai and Sterkfontein, their dangers, and the oldest decorated water vessels
  • Walking to Waterthe Laetoli footprints, and how people still find water in dry country
  • Blood and Milkwhen blood and milk entered the human diet, and chemical traces of milk in Saharan pottery
  • Plant and Fruit Juicesfruit, sap and fermenting fruit, an ancient mutation for digesting alcohol, and what Neanderthal dental calculus shows

Questions this chapter answers

  • What was the greatest danger at the water holes of early hominids?

    At Olduvai, a horned crocodile, Crocodylus anthropophagus, from layers dated to 1.84 million years ago — the largest predator our ancestors faced there.

  • What was one of the first objects people decorated, and what was it for?

    The answer is in the book →

  • When did people start drinking milk, and what chemical traces of it have been found?

    The answer is in the book →

  • How long have our ancestors been able to digest alcohol?

    About ten million years: a single mutation from roughly then left them far better at breaking down ethanol than the primates before them.

  • Did Neanderthals treat themselves with plants?

    The answer is in the book →

Short answers only. Chapter 1 gives the full account, with 7 footnotes to 7 sources.

Read more in the book

Sources

7 footnotes to 7 sources. Full references are in the bibliography.

  1. Brochu, Christopher A., Jackson Njau, Robert J. Blumenschine and Llewellyn D. Densmore. “A New Horned Crocodile from the Plio-Pleistocene Hominid Sites at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania.” PLoS ONE 5, no. 2 (2010): e9333. DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0009333.
  2. Pickering, Travis Rayne, Ron J. Clarke and Jacopo Moggi-Cecchi. “Role of Carnivores in the Accumulation of the Sterkfontein Member 4 Hominid Assemblage: A Taphonomic Reassessment of the Complete Hominid Fossil Sample (1936–1999).” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 125, no. 1 (2004): 1–15. DOI 10.1002/ajpa.10278.
  3. Texier, Pierre-Jean, Guillaume Porraz, John Parkington et al. “A Howiesons Poort Tradition of Engraving Ostrich Eggshell Containers Dated to 60,000 Years Ago at Diepkloof Rock Shelter, South Africa.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107, no. 14 (2010): 6180–6185. DOI 10.1073/pnas.0913047107.
  4. Leakey, Mary D. and Richard L. Hay. “Pliocene Footprints in the Laetolil Beds at Laetoli, Northern Tanzania.” Nature 278, no. 5702 (1979): 317–323. DOI 10.1038/278317a0.
  5. Dunne, Julie, Richard P. Evershed, Mélanie Salque et al. “First Dairying in Green Saharan Africa in the Fifth Millennium BC.” Nature 486, no. 7403 (2012): 390–394. DOI 10.1038/nature11186.
  6. Carrigan, Matthew A., Oleg Uryasev, Carole B. Frye et al. “Hominids Adapted to Metabolize Ethanol Long Before Human-Directed Fermentation.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112, no. 2 (2015): 458–463. DOI 10.1073/pnas.1404167111.
  7. Weyrich, Laura S., Sebastian Duchene, Julien Soubrier et al. “Neanderthal Behaviour, Diet, and Disease Inferred from Ancient DNA in Dental Calculus.” Nature 544, no. 7650 (2017): 357–361. DOI 10.1038/nature21674.