Walking around Northern British towns on a Friday evening can provide a glimpse of those early hominoid alcohol consuming ancestors.

I can kind of see alcohol being a powerful evolutionary mover: water sources are frequently contaminated, killing off lots of drinkers, and the kinds of biological contaminants frequently are more deadly in the young, (yes animals get sick from drinking dirty water just like people) while alcohol can be a decontaminant and is often present with hydrating water as well as other nutrients and energy sources (like fruit) keeping drinkers of both alive maybe long enough to reproduce.

I don't have a link to the video but: There's an island in the caribbean that has little monkeys who love to steal tourists' alcoholic drinks. Only about 12% of the monkeys drink the alcohol (repeatedly going back to it), the same rate of alcoholism in humans. I thought that was interesting, monkeys and humans have the same rate of alcoholism, I guess the AA group was right, maybe alcoholism is a genetic disease.

I have also read that alcohol was one of the first medicinal ingredient discovered by man. Elephants too like to get a bit high by eating overly ripe fruits.