Humans' love of booze comes from ape ancestors who ate fermented rotten fruit, major study finds
Scrumping by past primates explains why we evolved to be so 'astoundingly good at digesting alcohol ', researchers believe.
They say evidence from modern apes sheds a light on humans' fondness for alcohol — first produced deliberately in China about 9,000 years ago.
Experts point out that today's apes polish off up to 10lb of mouldy jungle floor fruit a day which ferments and becomes alcoholic as it breaks down.
It means the chimpanzees and gorillas end up spending a lot of their time tipsy.
Researcher Professor Nathaniel Dominy, from Dartmouth College, US, said: 'Scrumping by the last common ancestor of gorillas, chimpanzees and humans about ten million years ago could explain why humans are so astoundingly good at digesting alcohol.
'We evolved to metabolise alcohol long before we ever figured out how to make it.'
He added: 'Making it was one of the major drivers of the Neolithic Revolution that turned us from hunter-gatherers into farmers and changed the world.
"Primatologists observe this pretty regularly but there has been an absence of a word for it.'
The team used the word 'scrumping' — normally meaning stealing fruit — in the journal BioScience.
Study co-author Professor Catherine Hobaiter, from the University of St Andrews in Scotland, added: 'A fundamental feature of our relationship with alcohol is our tendency to drink together, whether a pint with friends or a large social feast.'
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