The taste for alcohol wouldn't have stayed in our gene pool, and the right to drink and

consume alcohol would not have stayed in our cultural repertoire, unless it was doing

some positive things that outweigh the cost.

I'm Rufus Griskym, and this is the next big idea.

Today, do we have alcohol to thank for civilization?

Most of us have had the experience of scrolling through Instagram and seeing a photo of a great

party and feeling a momentary pang of FOMO, the fear of missing out.

But recently I experienced something unusual, FOMO for a party that happened 11,000 years

ago.

It was a gathering, perhaps one of the first, of hundreds of hunter-gatherers in

southeastern Turkey having a multi-day rager.

So how do we know about this?

Back in the mid-90s, archaeologists started excavating a site near Irfa in modern-day

Turkey called Gobekli Tepe, and as they cleared away the sand and dirt, they were shocked

and not a little bit confused by what they uncovered.

More than 60 T-shaped pillars, each made of limestone, each weighing around 15 tons.

These pillars were so enormous, and they'd been lugged such a long distance from where

they were quarried.

That archaeologists estimate that it must have taken 500 people to get the job done.

And for what?

They found no evidence of habitation at Gobekli Tepe, no houses, no livestock, no grain silos.

Instead, what they discovered were scattered shards of broken cups and stone basins that

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