When considering mankind’s greatest discoveries and inventions, people tend to choose things like the development of the steam engine or moveable-type printing. Their significance can’t be doubted, of course. But there is one enormously important invention, one which casts such an enormous shadow over humanity that it tends to get overlooked.

It’s alcohol. Booze. Hooch. The good stuff.

The oldest brewery ever discovered – by archaeologists, in a cave near Haifa, Israel back in 2018 – is an astonishing 13,000 years old. That’s how long the bar has been open for. For context, 13,000 years ago there were still sabre-toothed tigers roaming around Britain and Stonehenge hadn’t been built yet. In fact, it wasn’t going to be built for another 8,000 years.