Creation Moment 1/17/2024 - Darwinian Drunk Theory of Brain

Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: 

and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise.
Proverbs 20:1

"Fermentation technology as a driver of human brain expansion (Bryant, Hansen and Hecht, Communications Biology, 23 Nov 2023). This is the official just-so story paper. It is full of the e-word “evolution” in the body of the article and in the references: 69 mentions in all.

The Darwinos try to soften their theory a bit by distinguishing

between internal fermentation (performed by some gut bacteria) and external fermentation, when the human ancestors accidentally discovered that fermented fruit is good for food, a delight to the eyes, and to be desired to make one wise. 

Soon, they were developing “fermentation technology” to get more wisdom (burp!).

"Fermentation allows for the proliferation of non-harmful or beneficial strains which out-compete harmful strains. For example, by-products of fermentation include alcohol and acid, which inhibit further microbial growth, effectively preserving the food. There are other food storage techniques whose effective timescales are within that of fermentation, such as smoking, drying, freezing, and salting (notably, often used in combination with fermentation). However, compared to these other methods, we propose that fermentation may have been accomplishable more easily, across a wider range of environments, and by earlier, smaller-brained, less cognitively-complex ancestors."

Even a dumb brute could get good at moonshine “technology,” they suggest. Funny that chimps never tried it.

It cannot be discounted that early fully-human created beings discovered a taste for ethyl alcohol, and may have learned to like it. Some of the earliest cuneiform tablets from Sumeria give recipes for beer. 

The crazy part of the Darwino hypothesis, though, is that alcohol drove hominid ancestors to evolve big brains, and as a consequence, cognitive complexity and semantic language emerged as by-products.

If that were true, alcoholics should have huge brains like aliens in some movies and be teaching relativity theory. They should be curing cancer and writing AI programs about How to Find the Missing Socks.

Q: Do these Darwinos have any evidence to back up their Fermentation Hypothesis? 

A: Yes! Why just look at all the people who like alcohol. A taste for liquor, therefore, must have evolved! And for proof, look—they all have big brains, too!

"If our hypothesis is correct, then we might expect to find evolved innate preferences for beneficial fermentation products or evolved innate aversions to dangerous byproducts of “off” fermentation.

Interestingly, it appears that many of the most disparately-regarded foods—seen by some as prized delicacies, and by others as supremely unappetizing—are fermented: for example, thousand-year eggs, natto, and Limburger cheese. These preferences appear to be highly culturally specific, which might be adaptive given the high cultural diversity of fermentation practices and the risks of consuming a ferment gone awry. The same flavors or odors which might signal “good” food in one culture could emanate from “off” ferments in another."

There you have it. “External fermentation [was] a driver of early hominin brain expansion.” Our ancestors couldn’t help themselves. Evolution drove them to drink.

Hey, it’s just a hypothesis, they admit. 

--Being Darwinians, the authors don’t need to prove it. Someone will work on this in the land of Futureware: (Tomorrowland). Meanwhile, their just-so story passed peer review, didn’t it? And Nature published it, didn’t they? Stop criticizing. This is Darwinian “research.”

"Future research could address the extent to which preferences for fermented products are innate, cultural, or may be the product of

gene-culture coevolution. For example, sour taste abilities have been proposed to have co-evolved with the production of fermented foods. Notably, preferences for sour or acidic foods are relatively rare in the animal kingdom. Human food preferences are highly variable across individuals and cultures and are culturally learned, a phenomenon which may be adaptive. Are preferences for fermented foods more susceptible to cultural learning than other food preferences? Are they more sensitive to experience in a developmental critical period, and/or less flexible after this period closes? Are they heritable, either genetically or epigenetically?"

They don’t know, and they don’t have to know. Darwinian just-so stories pass peer review no matter how lame. Why? Critics are kept out of sight in a soundproof booth behind one-way glass." 

CEH