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Alcohol and Meat

  • In 2008 researchers discovered that the more alcohol people drink on a regular basis, the lower their brain volume. People may lose up to 2% of their brain volume over the course of a lifetime. It doesn't sound like much, but consider that the difference between the human genome and the genome of the chimp is less than 1.5%.
  • Throughout history the nations with high alcoholic consumption have usually been the most aggressive: Rome, the Mongols, the European colonial powers (France, Spain, Britain), Germany, Russia, Japan and now the USA. These countries conquered most of their world. Countries that did not consume much alcohol were less prone to invade other countries.
  • There are exceptions, of course, the most notable being the Arabs.
  • If one adds red meat to the equation, though, one gets an almost perfect correlation between diet and warfare. The nations that ruled the world have consistently been nations whose people drank a lot of alcohol and ate a lot of meat. In the 21st century the biggest consumers of alcohol and meat were the Soviet Union and the USA. The Arabs didn't drink alcohol but were and are among the biggest consumers of red meat in the world.
  • I wonder what could be the cause for the correlation. If alcohol makes small brains and red meat makes big bodies, could it be that the combination of alcohol and red meat makes the perfect warrior society?