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Did beer come before bread? Perhaps, says University of British Colombia professor Edward Slingerland, who credits alcohol with spurring humankind's first agricultural revolution thousands of years ago. "Our drive to get intoxicated is what caused us to create civilization," he explains, adding that booze provided a "tool for helping us to cope with all the challenges of living in civilized societies." Find out more from Slingerland about the history of alcohol in the latest episode of GZERO World.

Watch the episode: The (political) power of alcohol