Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of IHeart Radio.

Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson.

And I'm Holly Fry.

It is New Year's Day, if you're listening to this episode on the day that it's coming out.

So we're going to talk about hangovers in history.

No reason.

Happy New Year.

It is likely that hangovers predate humanity.

Alcoholic beverages start with yeast, breaking down sugar from foods like honey or fruit,

producing ethanol and carbon

dioxide. The species of yeast most associated with this fermentation is Saccharomycese-Sera Vizier,

also called Brewer's Yeast or Baker's Yeast, although there are others.

Yeast has been around for hundreds of millions of years, although it's less certain when

these particular yeast developed. But fruit has been around for at least 80 million years.

Once fruit and these yeasts existed at the same time and place, there would have been opportunities

for natural fermentation. People who live near orchards or vineyards

or places with lots of fruit around often have stories about animals becoming intoxicated after eating

fermented fruit. Our long ago ancestors may have witnessed this and decided to try it for themselves.

Or they may have just happened to eat fermented fruit and discovered that it had an effect on them.

But logically, if they ate enough of it, they could have woken up the next day with symptoms like a headache, nausea, sensitivity to light and sound, fatigue, and anxiety, or a sense

of dread, those symptoms that together today are known as a hangover. Based on residues on pottery

fragments, humans had probably started fermenting things on purpose by about 10,000 BCE, although there's some

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