This has puzzled me since I thought of it a couple of years ago;  why were the American Indians so sensitive and vulnerable to alcoholic beverages?  We were taught that they had no alcoholic beverages before the "coming of the white man."  BUT WHY?  

Alcohol has been around in history forEVER ! ... it occurs naturally when things ferment.  NOAH got drunk 3000 years ago or thereabouts;  so WHY, WHY, WHY didn't the "pre-white-man" American Indians have alcoholic beverages??

Anybody?

Still (great name!)
I have often wondered that too. My DH is a wine freak and reads about stuff like the origins of wine and other alcoholic beverages, such as mead, distilled grains, (mesoamericans made pulque), etc.

http://www.dadamo.com/forum/archivea/config.pl?read=73905

Quoted Text

"David Chetlahay Paladin was an native American Indian ,a Navaho, who grew up on the reservation in the southwest. When he was 14 or 15 years old he
was a very serious alcoholic,...

My DH is part Indian and alcoholism runs in his family. They may not have needed liquor pre white man because of pot and peyote. Even smoking was considered sacred ( I believe?)...Aani

arent they mostly O's And might it be that gathere's are perhaps their main genes? Or just a form of mix between gatherers' and hunters' but also a lot of nonnies....
but perhaps is that only a question of the big part of psyche..meant here is that this was the only way in not getting further broken in being obliged to accept that their tribes were mostly destroyed by others, their lands taken away for nothing and even were they given free to be shot coz they were only natives... a question of a complete other understanding how to treat mother nature and humans as well....

a question of the collective unconsciousness....

Mostly O's, lot of non-secretors..

My first guess would be 'Corn.'  But maybe that's cause they are mostly O's.

Ever know a vegetarian Indian?  

I don't know very many.  But the few I've known were more interested (and understandably so!) in heritage than in health.

The native Americans that gave us corn, were not as healthy as the native Americans in the old west then? I wonder if there are any studies on it?

I greatly admire native Americans. They are the only people that only took what they needed from the land and gave back to it. Now, I read the drug dealers have them and people that try to go in and help them are killed.

I recall reading about the differences in the bodies in ancient burial grounds like Cahokia showed a decline in their bones & teeth after corn was introduced.  

I have heard there is a gene for alcoholism....and they have it....

When you consider how the modern Native American diet is so wrong from a BTD standpoint, it's not hard to see how severe imbalances in their bodies can make them even more susceptible to addiction.

And, as Isa speculated, there may be a very large percentage of Gatherers, who do not handle alcohol well, at all.  And they are easily caught in the craving/compulsion loop.

I've heard that many are missing the gene(s) needed to metabolize alcohol efficiently...like Explorers?

I know what corn does to my B husband.  If Os react anything like Bs to corn, I can understand why they have certain tendencies.

I was wondering WHY the "pre-white-man" or "pre-exposure" North American Indians apparently did NOT drink alcohol or distill alcohol.  

Link to "The Genographic Project," by National Geographic:
https://www3.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/
the "human journey" shows humans traveling across Asia and into the Americas about 60,000 years ago (I was playing around with this one about a week ago, so that's as I recall).  ... well, that would've been well before the Pentateuch (including story of Noah) was written.  Alcohol has been used by humans in OTHER cultures for a long, long time, though.

Perhaps it just never occurred to them to make the fermented fruits that MUST have occurred into a beverage( ...

Or, could it have been that the yeasts that ferment fruit into alcohol did not EXIST on the north and south American continents?  Did American Indians use any OTHER yeast products?  

I feel like I have native american blood coming from my father's side because I passed down the O gene to my little son. It's a intuitive feeling, women have..sorry guys.  

DH says ( I wonder how many posts I've started with those two words) they most certainly had alcohol, but not distilled alcohol.  Distilling it just made them drunk faster.

He said they lack the alleles for the genes that metabolize alcohol.

Quoted from Ribbit

He said they lack the alleles for the genes that metabolize alcohol.

The big question of this thread is why? Ask DH that question.

I just finsihed reading a novel about an Ogala, northern plains Indian woman living between 1834 and 1879 witnessing the invasion of the white people and the decline of her civilization.  My question was in this reading was ....if the plains Indians who were O's and hunters/gathers  ( men hunted, women gathered) were not disturbed and could continue eating buffalo and other animals  and the few vegetables and fruits they gathered....and their sanitation was better and shelter better....how long could they have lived? It seems the diet of these people described by the author, was just about ideal for O's but their living conditions were not.

Her description of the effects of alcohol on a few of the men was really devestating.  Once started, it seemed they were powerless to stop. Even the earliest encounters.   It seems to me something strongly gentic was was playing out there.

Small pox from the whites had a terrible effect on the people too. Vulnerable Os also?  Reminded me of "1491" book club reading last year.    

Ribbi, I merely guess thats mostly the fact of metabolizing faster or slower....the issue is called methylations...

There seems to be a parallel with Australia aboriginals here.   When the white man showed up the alcohol and imported diseases decimated them.
From what I know they didnt make alcohol themselves but had a variety of other drugs and hallucogenics, all natural of course

Alright, here's DH's take in it.  He said when you have a fairly (relatively) small population interbreeding, with no new information, some genetic defects are going to pop up.  He said there's an area in China with the opposite "problem" (not much of a problem IMO!) where all the people are extremely tolerant of alcohol and they can drink and drink and drink and they metabolize it and don't get drunk.  Their genes adapted to be able to handle it.  The American Indians' genes did not.  He said it's really all "luck of the draw" so to speak (although I cringed when he said that, and you will understand why, Andrea) when it comes to small populations and what "pops up" genetically.

I don't metabolize alcohol very well.  If I have two glasses of wine with dinner I'll still be feeling it when I wake up during the night many hours later.  On an empty stomach I can't handle more than half a glass, and I feel it circulating on the first or second sip.

Lest we get too hasty in romanticizing American Indian lifestyle (and they did have some qualities worth admiring, like any people group), history also tells us they were savages.  The tribes were always at war with each other and didn't hesitate to wipe out an "enemy" if they wanted their land.  It wasn't all peaceful and calm and quiet on the Western front before white man arrived.  We didn't teach them the lovely practice of scalping.  They were already doing that with great relish when we arrived.

Quoted from Ribbit

Alright, here's DH's take in it.  He said when you have a fairly (relatively) small population interbreeding, with no new information, some genetic defects are going to pop up.  We didn't teach them the lovely practice of scalping.  They were already doing that with great relish when we arrived.

That was me, not Andrea that asked Ribbit.. I of course didn't take into consideration the..uh interbreeding causing abnormalities. You also explained the Indiana Jones Raiders of the lost Ark, where Karen Allen drinks a "Chinese..Tibetan guy" under the table, and why the other guys were so amazed!

I know there were many savage tribes, but there were many peaceful ones as well, from  what I've read.

I don't metabolize alochol well either. I had 4 ounces after work on an empty stomach and my son had to drive..

Hey Ribbit and Diana, you are like me, a "cheap date"!   I can "feel" the effects of the alcohol after just a few sips too. My body is very sensitve to any type of medicine also.I rarely drink wine, even though I enjoy sipping it while I make supper, because even half a glass makes me so sleepy that I don't get anything done in the evening. Now I make myself a cup of tea and sip that instead.

My mom, an AB, is a lifelong alcoholic, as was her father. Hmmm..... another reason for me to avoid booze!

Sorry, Diana, for some reason Andrea's name was in my head.